FINLAND – Icelandic banking group Kaupthing says its asset management arm has been awarded around €250m by €4.9bn Finnish pension insurance company Etera.

“The amount roughly €250m will be reallocated from their existing managers into Kaupthing Manager Selection funds by the end of the second quarter,” said Pia Michelsson, Kaupthing’s head of asset management in Finland.

“Etera has indeed made/is about to make an investment into Kaupthing's manager selection, or KMS, fund structure,” Ari Korhonen, chief investment officer for securities investments at Etera, told IPE.

“However, we wouldn't like to discuss the redemptions too much as some of the current managers will also probably be a part of this future investment.”

He said Etera sees KMS as a tool for selecting and supervising the best active managers within each field.

“It may well be that we have already had money invested in some of those funds. However, by adding KMS into the equation we are still both able to secure the high professional standard of our active managers going forward and concentrate more on other areas of interest by ourselves.”

Etera, the former LEL Employment Pension Fund that merged with the TaEL Pension Fund last year, made a return on its investments of 8.7% in 2004.

"Etera's first full year of operations was good. We achieved excellent results in both insurance and investment," says Etera's managing director Lauri Koivusalo.

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