UK – Henderson Global Investors has been axed as investment manager by two separate funds in a matter of days, amounting to a total loss of more than £450m (€647m).

The roughly £400m London Borough of Barnet pension scheme replaced Henderson following poor performance, according to a scheme spokesperson.

Henderson’s brief was subsequently split. A roughly £150m balanced mandate was awarded to Newton Investment Management, and a £53m mandate was awarded to Midas Capital Partners based in Liverpool.

The spokesperson for the scheme – which has between 6,000 and 7,000 contributing members - stated that Henderson and Schroders had each run balanced mandates of roughly equal size. Schroders is still an investment manager for the scheme.

Henderson declined to comment on the loss.

bfinance was the adviser in the tendering and selection process, which started in June 2005. Newton - the £29bn UK asset management arm of Mellon Financial Corp. – will take over the brief in April.

“We are delighted to work with London Borough of Barnet and look forward to seeing our relationship develop further,” said Newton chief investment officer Jeff Munroe.

Meanwhile, earlier this month Henderson was also axed from managing an equity brief for the £3bn London Pension Fund Authority.

The LPFA restructured the mandate, creating two new global equity briefs, one of which was awarded to Newton Investment Management (£300m) and one to MSS Capital.

An LPFA spokesperson told IPE: “Henderson bid for it but was not successful.”