UK - The London Borough of Hillingdon Pension Fund has launched a tender for a manager to run a global infrastructure mandate.

The size of the mandate is flexible, with an initial target of £22.5m (€25.7m) - roughly 5% of the fund's £420m assets - and the potential to rise to £45m (10% of assets). The mandate may be split between managers.
 
The mandate covers both advice and management. Hillingdon has not selected a benchmark but says this will be discussed with the successful manager. Single fund strategies will not be considered.

It follows a recent tender by the council for an equity manager for the pension scheme, following the termination of Capital International's active overseas equity mandate because of underperformance. (See earlier IPE article: Hillingdon seeks equity manager, shows Capital the door)

The fund's total portfolio is currently split between Alliance Bernstein, which runs active global equities on a growth and value blend basis; Goldman Sachs AM (active fixed income); SSgA (passive multi-asset (fixed income and global equities)); UBS (active UK equities on a value basis, and also property); and LGT Capital and Adams Street, which manage the private equity investments.

Meanwhile the pension fund's results for the second quarter of 2009 showed an improvement over the previous quarter, as the fund returned 7.21%, outperforming its benchmark by 0.19%.

Over the 12 months to the same date, however, the fund lost 1.95%, but still outperformed its benchmark by 0.06%.

The deadline for tenders is noon (UK time) on 19 October 2009. Specifications and more information are available from Hymans Robertson.