UK – The £1.9bn (e3.4bn) City of Edinburgh Council Lothian Pension Fund has pulled an approximately £150m European equities brief from Deutsche Asset Management and split the balance between Bank of Ireland Asset Management (BIAM) and Edinburgh based Blackrock.

BIAM, which formerly managed around £30m for the fund has its mandate increased to £75m.
Blackrock picks up the remaining £75m in European equities ex UK.

Keith Shepherd, head of investment and treasury at the fund, comments: “ We have all our managers on a fixed-term contract and it was the end of Deutsche’s contract. What we have decided to do is go with two rather more aggressive managers.
“ One is fairly aggressive with a growth bias which is Blackrock and the other, Bank of Ireland, is aggressive with a value bias.
“ They’ve both got quite high targets and we hope that by mixing the two we ought to remain style neutral.”

The fund has also switched a property portfolio from Royal London Asset Management to Standard Life.

Shepherd himself is also on the move to the Wellcome Trust as head of public equities.




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