UK - Devon County Council has sacked Capital International as one of the asset managers to its £2.19bn (€2.76bn) pension fund and is now searching for new managers to look after three global fixed income and equity mandates.

Officials were unavailable for comment at the time of publication, but the latest minutes of the Council's pension fund investment committee reveal they were unhappy with Capital's performance and have resolved they "terminate Capital International and a replacement manager be appointed as soon as possible".

On the back of this, Devon CC (DCC) is moving the fixed interest portion of Capital's mandate in-house and a transition manager is being sought to shift its equity-related mandate into the trackers funds managed by one or either its existing external managers, while a search for one or more global equity managers to look after a £180m portfolio on a pooled or segregated basis. Is completed.

Specific details of the tender notice state the global equity portfolio must be return 2-4% per annum, gross of fees, above its FTSE World Index benchmark.

At the same time, Devon is also searching for one or more global fixed income managers to handle a £300m portfolio, which must achieve 75-125 basis points, gross of fees, versus the Lehman Global Aggregate.

It has also issued a notice for managers of an emerging markets equity portfolio worth £100m which again must achieve 2-4%, gross of fees, bove the MSCI Emerging Markets Index.

All tenders must be submitted by July 14, 2008 and Bfinance is assisting in the search.

It is unclear which mandates Capital was previously responsible for as DCC's  2006/2007 financial results state the firm looked after 11.1% of the pension fund's asset.

This does not cleanly correspond to the fund's asset allocation, as the exact asset allocation of the fund was split to the end of March 2007 as 39% UK equities, 30% overseas equities, 7% held in cash, 9% in UK fixed interest, 5% in overseas fixed interest and 10% in UK property unit trusts.

The same report reveals Devon County Council in-house investment team looked after 39% of the assets, while State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) managed 20%, UBS was responsible for managing 29.8% of assets - 18.2% of which was held in a managed fund - alongside Capital's responsibility for 11.1%.

Topics