The £1.8bn (e2.8bn) West Bromwich based pension fund of brewery group Bass has switched a £200m passive global equity portfolio from Invesco to Legal & General (L&G) in pursuit of added value from the fund’s assets.
Mark Bellm, secretary to the trustees of the Bass scheme, explains: “We felt Invesco to be a relatively small player in this market and were looking for a larger player with better opportunities to add value. There are still opportunities to add value from passively managed funds, such as stock lending of the assets, which we want to look at.” He says the trustees considered three managers before selecting L&G.
The main Bass fund and its sister scheme, the £400m Bass Executive Pension Plan, have also appointed Rothschild Asset Mangement to manage two separate bond briefs of £150m and £30m respectively.
Bellm says: “The previous bond mandate was essentially an active UK bonds brief – fixed-interest and index-linked. The change now is that we are including corporate bonds and overseas investment. We carried out a normal review process following the change in mandate nature and selected the manager most appropriate to the new brief.