Global

GLOBAL - Pension fund assets are still below pre-crisis levels despite improvements, research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has revealed.

GLOBAL - Aon Hewitt will deliver cost savings of $355m (£235m) a year through cuts in both back and front office operations, Aon Corporation has said.

GLOBAL - Three quarters of institutional investment managers believe global growth will remain stagnant over the next six months, according to research by Northern Trust Global Advisors (NTGA).

GLOBAL - Aon Consulting and Hewitt Associates are to merge to form a new consultancy in a $4.9bn deal.

GLOBAL - Scheme allocations to alternative assets have increased almost three-fold over the past 10 years, Towers Watson research has revealed.

GLOBAL - Pension funds and other institutional investors could plough more than $200bn into worldwide property markets over the next five years, Invesco Real Estate has predicted.

GLOBAL - Multi-national companies have started to look at using in-house insurers to tackle their funding issues. Helen Fowler reports

GLOBAL - Highly volatile markets combined with uncertainty over the sovereign debt crisis will stunt institutional inflows for the rest of the year, research by McKinsey & Co suggests.

GLOBAL - Global pension funds are increasingly requesting customised fixed income performance benchmarks that exclude exposure to asset classes, market sectors and countries that breach macro-economic indicators.

GLOBAL - PIMCO has warned the global economy faces the threat of rising inflation, driven partly by central banks using it as a solution to fiscal deficits.