Greater Manchester Pension Fund (GMPF), the UK’s largest local authority fund, has appointed three managers to a £750m (€970m) credit framework agreement.

The appointments follow a tender last year, which saw the £17.4bn GMPF seek managers for a £650m multi-credit portfolio and a £100m high-quality credit portfolio.

The £650m mandate, which will target a LIBOR outperformance of 4-6%, will seek to invest in higher-yielding debt opportunities, including private placements, the fund said.

The second, £100m mandate, which would have the potential to grow “significantly” over time, would target higher-rated debt instruments, with an average credit rating of A across the portfolio.

As a result, the GMPF said it would target a LIBOR outperformance of 2 percentage points.

“The aim of this mandate,” it added, “is to build a portfolio of assets that can generate cash flows to form part of a liability cash-flow matching strategy.

“It is anticipated the mandate will invest in a number of shorter-dated, credit-related opportunities, including loans and high-yield debt.”

GMPF said a dozen managers had been shortlisted for the framework agreement but that only KKR, Oak Hill Advisors and Stone Harbor Investment Partners had been appointed.

None of the three managers was employed by GMPF, according to its most recent annual report, and the fund could not be reached for comment on which, if any, had been seeded.

At the end of March 2015, UBS Asset Management was in charge of £6.4bn of GMPF’s £16bn in externally managed assets, while Legal & General Investment Management was responsible for a further £6.1bn.

Capital Group was in charge of a £2.2bn securities portfolio, while Investec managed £667m in assets for the fund.

The remaining £600m in external assets, invested in real estate, were largely overseen by LaSalle Investment Management, while GVA was in charge of £86m. 

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