UK – The 24th edition of Pension Funds and their Advisers, known as ‘The Blue Book’ by the UK pension funds industry, has been published by London based AP Information Services.

The new version for 2001, with details of over 2,600 UK pension funds and 850 British professional advisers, has a foreword this year by David Cranston, director general of the UK National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF).

In his prologue Cranston discusses the current debate about regulatory issues affecting pension schemes and the, now scrapped, minimum funding requirement (MFR), with suggestions to replace it.

In a further article, Peter Tomkins, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers and chairman of the Pensions Board of the UK Faculty and Institute of Actuaries, argues that MFR did not safeguard money in pension schemes because it “was about funding, not about the custody of the investments of the schemes themselves.”

Justin Rowse, editor of the book, adds that increased clarification, transparency and governance seem to be some of the main drivers for the coming year.

David Boal, managing director of Bank of Ireland Asset Management, and Tony Filbin, UK sales director of stakeholder pensions at Legal and General, have also contributed articles to Pension Funds and their Advisors.

A CD-Rom version of Pension Funds and their Advisers 2001 is also available, with data from International Pension Funds and their Advisers, or ‘The Red Book,’ and is electronically updated each quarter.