UK - Officials managing the £9.24bn (€10.3bn) Strathclyde pension fund have begun the search for a bond manager who could eventually look after up to £800m.

Details of a tender notice issued this week show Glasgow City Council, the local authority behind the Strathclyde fund, are looking to hire an absolute return bond manager for a mandate worth between £300m and £800m.

The authority had announced in September it was reviewing its fixed income strategy as managers Henderson Investors and Western Asset Management had seriously underperformed.

Closer analysis suggests the pension fund has begun to make changes to its strategy as details of its latest manager arrangements and portfolio briefs to 30 September 2008 show Partners Group is no longer on the list although the fund had earlier specified it planned to allocate up to 5% to private equity.

But Goodman, now know as Aberdeen Property Investors is still on the list of managers despite being warned it was on a "close watching brief" until the firm found a new fund manager to look after its money, alongside Capital International. (See earlier IPE story;)

Details of the tender notice state the bond mandate will be benchmarked to 3-month LIBOR, seeking 1-3% over the cash benchmark, and a pooled fund solution may be required.

The search is being conducted through its investment consultant Hyman Robertson and tenders must be submitted by noon on 16 January 2009.

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