UK – The roughly £2.2bn (€3.2bn) pension fund of broadcaster ITV is expected to shift from equities to bonds following a review of the scheme’s investment strategy.

“The trustees are actually going through an investment strategy review at the moment,” a spokesperson for the scheme told IPE.

Before the review started, the fund had roughly 77% invested in equities and 25% allocated to bonds.

“But that will be changing as part of that review,” said the spokesperson, confirming that the mature scheme will increase its allocation to bonds.

According to a statement from commercial broadcaster ITV, the review is expected to be completed within the next two to three months.

The spokesperson confirmed recent reports that the board is looking at possibly outsourcing the management of the pension – just one of many issues being reviewed by the fund.

“We continue to review what’s out there in terms of developments in pensions, but at the moment we are still at the review stage. We haven’t made any decisions as yet in terms of anything like that,” she added.

“We are looking at a whole range of things. We’re not specifically looking at that one item. We’ve got a whole range going on – just looking at the risks of the scheme.”

Recent reports stated that the ITV board is looking to outsource the management to one of the new pension liability buyout firms. Should the board agree to the move, ITV would be the first FTSE 100 firm to do so.

The scheme – with a roughly £325m deficit at the end of 2005/beginning of 2006 – has roughly 28,000 members.

However, according to a statement from ITV, the deficit was reduced between the end of last year and April 30 “due to a positive investment performance on the assets and rises in long term real interest rates reducing the net present value of the liabilities”.

Earlier this year a consortium led by Goldman Sachs withdrew from a bid to buy ITV.