ITALY – Generali Asset Management, Nextra Investment Management and AXA Investment Managers have lost out amid changes at the €360m pension scheme of the partly privatised state energy and gas producer Enel, FOPEN.

FOPEN president Salvatore Martinelli said the round of appointments closes the first phase of selection, which has resulted in five specialists being taken on.

Martinelli also stated in an e-mail to IPE that the fund planned to create a new investment section in addition to the four current ones. He added the board of directors would tend to appoint specialists whenever possible.

“The board of directors has decided that such a model is the most adequate for opportunities the fund owes to its members in a spirit of return maximisation,” he stated.

A spokesman of the fund confirmed today that Generali, Nextra and AXA, which with Duemme SGR S.p.A and San Paolo Institutional Asset Management used to manage the fund, had lost their mandates. Sanpaolo and Duemme, on the other hand, were retained.

For the time being the fund is split in four investment compartments. Cash accounts for 16% of the fund, while a balanced - mainly bonds – section compartment is worth 74%. There is a balanced section, equally split between equities and bonds, that is worth seven percent. And there is a balanced - mainly equities - portfolio, worth three percent.

DWS Investments Italy SGR S.p.A. has won the six-month cash mandate. The mainly bonds compartment has been split into six mandates, five of which are allocated to specialists.

Pictet & C. Sim S.p.A and Sanpaolo Institutional Asset Management won two actively managed Euro Government bond briefs, each worth 28% of the section.

An actively managed corporate bond mandate, worth 14% of the compartment goes to Duemme SGR S.p.A, while the European equity mandate, 16%, has been awarded to Edmond de Rothschild AM.

Allianz Dresdner Asset Management International will run the Japanese equity mandate, initially worth three percent.

The remaining part will be allocated to US actively managed equity brief . Martinelli said the fund will put out a request for tender for a manager for a “in the next few months”.

Duemme has also scooped the two remaining compartments. These are a balanced section that is invested in overseas equities and government bonds, and a mainly equities section that is invested 70:30 in international equities and government bonds.

The fund’s board of directors has also decided in December to create a fifth compartment “which in terms of structure and risk targets will be between the current cash and the balanced bonds compartments”.

The new compartment would have a higher exposure to bonds, Martinelli stated in his e-mail. The decision has come “to guarantee members a coherently adequate choice”, he added.

Topics