News

EUROPE - T. Rowe Price and Lane Clark & Peacock (LCP) have both announced expansion plans across Europe.

UK - The pension buyout market could be worth £10bn (US$19.5bn) by the end of the year, according to Aon.

US - Public pension funds had the best returns in a poor first quarter of 2008 which saw institutional investors loose an average -5.28% on their investments, according to Wilshire Associates.

THE National Association of Pension Funds and the Wheels Common Investment Fund are set to bring a test case against HM Revenue and Customs to recover £300m of VAT.

THE buyout market saw £2.2bn of deals in the first quarter of 2008, Aon Consulting research reveals.

THE Pensions Trust has appointed Catherine Howarth and Kevin McNerney as to its board as member nominated directors.

US - CalPERS has gained support from three proxy advisors to call for the annual election of board members to Standard Pacific after placing the company on its watch list.

GLOBAL - Real estate and global equities were the most popular asset classes in 2007, according to Mercer's Manager Search Report.

UK - The £9.8bn (US$19bn) Strathclyde Pension Fund announced it has reappointed Northern Trust as master custodian.

US - Automotive parts supplier Delphi has moved some of its unfunded pension liabilities to parent company General Motors (GM) and has not applied to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp (PBGC) to increase pension funding waivers.