EUROPE - Three institutional investors, including two continental European pension funds, are looking to hire asset managers for specialist equity mandates, using IPE Quest.

The first of three request for proposals (RFPs) issued today concerns a German corporate pension fund which wants to invest $90m (€64.3m) in US small cap equities.

QN1038 states the fund would prefer to invest in active core small cap strategies, benchmarked to the Russell 2000 index, though slight growth or value bias will be considered too as would US small to mid cap.

Performance should be stated gross of fees to 31 May 2009, with minimum track record of three years, but five years would be better.

Experience of the German KAG-setup would be beneficial but is not a requirement and RFPs should be submitted by 3 July.

Elsewhere, QN1036 states a European industry-wide pension fund is seeking in invest $20m (€14.3m) in global emerging markets microfinance which delivers a target return of 5-8%.

In this case the performance should be stated net of fees to 31 March 2009 and a minimum track record of two years is required by managers with a focus on both debt and equity.

Submissions must be presented by 10 July, 2009.

And finally, QN1037 reveals a Danish investment firm is looking to invest at least €50m in global emerging market bonds, with the assistance of consultancy firm Kirstein Finance.

Kirstein is handling the search for a long-only local currency GEM debt manager which will act as a sub-adviser to the Danish company.

In particular, local currencies must account for 80% of the allocation while opportunistic currencies - US dollar, sterling, yen can amount to 20% of the weighting.

Use of derivatives is allowed, though indexed, multi-manager and leveraged products are not, and expected excess performance is 2-3% of the JP Morgan Global Bond Index-Emerging Markets (GBI-EM).

This quest search closes on 6 July 2009.

For further information on all searches, go to www.ipe-quest.com.

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