UK – The roughly £1.15bn (€1.7bn) North Yorkshire Pension Fund has axed JP Morgan as global custodian, a scheme official confirmed today.

JP Morgan had serviced the scheme since December 2001, technical accountant Neil Sellstrom told IPE.

He added that this was a competitive tendering process, which took place over a six-month period. Consultants Thomas Murray acted as advisers to the scheme, which has 27,987 members.

Sellstrom could not comment on the value of the contract nor on which firm had replaced JP Morgan. “We are not in a position to make a public statement” ahead of a press release due out later this month, he told IPE.

This is the fourth UK pension fund loss for JP Morgan to emerge in less than a month. It’s also lost out at Royal London Asset Management, the Railway Pension Trustee Co. and the Merchant Navy Officers Pension Fund.

JP Morgan says it has won £30bn of UK pensions business in the last year, and it has 43% of the top 100 pension funds. There’s been “very strong growth in our franchise” a spokesperson has said.

JP Morgan today did not respond to IPE requests for comment.

In September, the North Yorkshire scheme with the assistance of JP Morgan as transition manager completed a restructuring of its portfolio - which saw a shift from balanced to specialist managers.

Baillie Gifford was awarded 25% of the scheme, Barclays Global Investors and Standard Life were in charge of 23% each, Hermes Pensions Management was given 4%, and the remaining managers were a selection of small boutiques.

Topics