UK - Strathclyde, the £8.9bn (€13.27bn) Glasgow City Council pension fund, has appointed AllianceBernstein, Invesco Perpetual, Edinburgh Partners and Lazard to run an unconstrained global equity mandate.

The size of the mandate is still undetermined, but reports yesterday said it was most likely to come from the terminating £1.4bn active multi asset mandate managed by Schroders.

The mandate, awarded following a public tender exercise, follows last year's review of the fund's investment strategy undertaken by consultant Hymans Robertson.

One of the firm's recommendations after the review in April last year was that the fund should accommodate unconstrained, long-only global equity mandates.

The fund commented: "The rationale behind this recommendation was to ‘free' investment managers from a benchmark driven mindset, to allow asset managers to populate a portfolio with their best investment ideas, and to hold stocks which they wanted to own - as opposed to having to own to manage risk relative to a benchmark index."

The fund currently employs 15 external fund managers, each with a specific investment brief.

Managers include Legal & General managing passive global index tracking, Baillie Gifford for active global equity, Henderson for global fixed interest and Gartmore for active UK smaller companies.

Elsewhere, it was announced that the £270m Port of London Authority Pension Fund, advised by consultancy firm Aon, has awarded a £250m fixed income mandate to AXA Investment Managers.

AXA said the mandate will be managed by its sterling-grade fixed income team, which will look to outperform a scheme specific benchmark of 90% fixed coupon gilts and 10% index-linked gilts.

The mandate was previously managed by Morley, which was replaced after a general review, according to a spokeswoman for the fund.

It is the fund's policy to invest the majority of its assets in bonds, the spokeswoman added.