US – Boeing’s $36bn pension fund will invest $1bn to start-up and ethnic-minority fund managers with less than $2bn under management because returns are higher there.

The Boeing investment is the largest in US and follows similar moves by the CalPERs and Verizon pension funds in America and the €161bn ABP’s 2001 joint venture with State Street to find new fund management companies.

Mark Schmid, chief investment officer at Boeing, said: “Studies and experience have shown emerging investment firms’ entrepreneurial nature and agility in making investment shifts can generate value-added performance.”

Boeing said it would announce the two managers of managers it would use to help with finding the emerging investment companies in the next few weeks and said, although it would mainly look for US equity managers it could look internationally for investment companies. The spokeswoman added that the focus was better performance and also fitted with the group’s diversity objectives to broaden the base of companies it worked with.