IRELAND – The €11.6bn National Pension Reserve Fund has declined to comment on a report that troubled Bank of Ireland Asset Management faces losing a €400m mandate.

Adrian O’Donovan, senior manager with NPRF, a fund created in 2001 to provide partial funding of Ireland’s pension costs from 2025, declined to comment on an unsourced report on an Irish business website saying that BIAM could lose the brief.

O’ Donovan told IPE that the National Treasury Management Agency, which oversees the fund, constantly monitors managers and formal meetings occur at least every six months. It is unclear whether BIAM had recently met or how soon it be in touch with the NTMA.

BIAM has been faced with an exit of both assets and top managers recently. It was not available for comment.

According to the NPRF’s website, BIAM manages a euro-zone large-cap passive equity portfolio, benchmarked against the FTSE Eurobloc index and a pan-Europe large-cap equity one, benchmarked against the FTSE Developed Europe index.

Last November, BIAM, named a new chief executive, Rothschild’s Kevin Dolan, amid a loss of €7.7bn in assets under management.

The bank’s asset management services arm saw its AUM fall three percent to 56 billion euros in the six months to the end of September 2004 – reflecting net outflows of two billion euros.

Last month BIAM lost its UK head David Boal, to Australian financial services group Perpetual, which is expected to set up a Dublin-domiciled global equities business early next year.

He followed former deputy Bank of Ireland CIOs Des Sullivan and John Nolan, senior portfolio managers Richard Kelly and John Forde, as well as portfolio manager Sarah Molloy.