News

EUROPE - Ambitious proposals from the European Commission (EC) to tackle climate change, including a 20% reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, will provide pension funds with the impetus to invest in renewable energy.

GLOBAL - Worthwhile investment opportunities for pension funds in certain high quality mortgage backed securities (MBS) products could be being overlooked due to investor aversion to sub-prime MBS, experts have claimed.

AUSTRALIA - Credit Suisse Asset Management Australia is partnering with Julius Baer Investment Management (JBIM) in the US to provide clients direct and exclusive access to JBIM's global equity products.

US - Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard has urged the state to take over the city's police and fire pension obligations, as a way to deal with the impacts of legislation to cap property taxes.

UK - The House of Commons has appointed pensions services company rpmi to provide third party administration services to the trustees of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund (PCPF).

SELF-INVESTED personal pension provider James Hay has been awarded a five star rating by Defaqto for two of its SIPP products.

UK -The £1.5bn (US$2.9bn) Durham County Council pension fund has today announced a radical shake-up of its asset allocations, with six new mandates going live across a range of asset classes, designed to increase returns and reduce contribution rates....

US - The US$174bn California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) has selected four investment managers to oversee the construction of a fund of funds for the scheme's $1.8bn US Equities Developing Manager Program.

AUSTRALIA - The world's leading institutional investors, including six pension funds, have been used as a model to develop best practices for all funds.

While volatile trading conditions have generated money-making opportunities for pension funds in securities lending programmes, Rachel Alembakis discovers the cash reinvestment component of these programmes could be putting funds at risk