UK - The £2.2bn (€2.37bn) Essex Pension Fund has appointed Fidelity International as an active global equity manager.

The pension fund, which employed 17 investment managers at the end of March 2009 and had £684.9m invested in overseas equities, initiated a search for an active global equity manager in October 2008. (See earlier IPE article: Essex tenders 10% to global equity)

Essex confirmed Fidelity was awarded the mandate, valued at between £100-300m, with the aim of outperforming the MSCI All-Companies World Index benchmark or other appropriate benchmark by between 2-4% a year over a rolling three- to five-year period.

Hymans Robertson conducted the tender for the mandate, which was funded at the end of August, and the appointment of Fidelity was based on a range of criteria with philosophy, process, team and corporate capability all weighted equally at 22.5%. 

Figures from the council's statement of accounts showed the value of the pension fund dropped from £2.93bn at March 2008 to £2.2bn a year later, although the latest actuarial valuation is still from 2007 when the scheme had assets of £3bn and a funding level of 79.6%. That said the report confirmed the council had commissioned an interim valuation of the Fund as at 31 March 2009.

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