GERMANY - AGI, the German arm of Allianz Global Investors said inflows to its institutional funds (Spezialfonds) last year totalled €7.3bn. It added that almost 40% of the volume was pension money from corporates.

Last year's inflows helped lift AGI's total Spezialfonds volume to €99.5bn, from €89.1bn in 2005. AGI is the market leader in this area.

Breaking down the €7.3bn, AGI said 38% came from corporate clients, 24% from foundations, 24% from ecumenical organisations and 14% from banks.

The high percentage of corporate money was in part because since 2005 many bigger German firms have created contractual trust arrangements (CTAs) to finance their pension liabilities.

Other asset managers in Germany, including Deutsche Asset Management, UBS and State Street, have also benefited from a need to manage billions of euros from CTAs.

For this year, AGI said it wanted to build on last year's good performance in the German institutional market. It noted that its Spezialfonds volume had broken through the €100bn mark since January.

Separately, DekaBank, the asset manager for German state-owned Sparkassen and Landesbanken, said its Spezialfonds (ex-real estate) saw €6.8bn worth of outflows in 2006.

DekaBank also had another €963m invested in real estate-type Spezialfonds.

As a result of the outflows, DekaBank's Spezialfonds volume fell to €35.2bn, from €42bn in 2005. About 15% of its Spezialfonds volume came from pension funds, it said.

DekaBank added that the outflows were offset by €4.4bn in inflows to advisory mandates and €8.6bn to its so-called master funds. Master funds centralise back office administration for institutional clients to boost transparency and reduce costs.

Oliver Behrens, board executive in charge of asset management, also noted that DekaBank was winning more third-party business via investments consultants.

"Until 2004, the performance of our funds was such that consultants really did not consider us," he told a press conference in Frankfurt. "Since then, we have been getting their attention. I would say that consultants make up a bit under 10% of our business, but it is growing.