SWITZERLAND – Swiss pension fund assets exceeded CHF540bn (€346.7bn) in the second quarter of 2005 – with schemes making the best quarterly returns for 24 months, according to two studies published today.

The news comes from the CSAM Swiss Pension Fund Index and a report from WM Performance Services.

The CSAM index, which includes about 70 pension funds which use Credit Suisse as custodian, found that the second quarter - when assets rose by around CHF19bn – was the third-best quarterly results in its history.

Meanwhile, State Street’s WM said the median manager in the so-called ‘Swiss Balanced Universe’, returned 3.9% - up from 2.3% in the previous quarter.

“The second quarter saw the best quarterly results for the Swiss Universe in the last 24 months,” said Peter Leutenegger, vice president of marketing and sales at WM.

According to CSAM, pension funds with assets of CHF150-500m delivered the best performance.

In terms of relative performance, funds with less than CHF150m achieved the best results with +3.81%, CSAM pointed out.

CSAM saw a 0.8% decline in liquidity to 6.9% as well as a shift from Swiss francs to foreign currencies in comparison to the first quarter of 2005.

The allocation to Swiss bonds fell by 0.3%, while Swiss equities was also lower at 0.27%. “Foreign equities and foreign currency bonds continued to benefit (+0.40% and +0.8%, respectively),” the report said.

Real estate showed a “modest” increase of 0.1%. Alternative investments were flat, at 2%.

“There are still some funds, however, that hold no alternative investments and only negligible units of real estate (0.04%) or mortgage investments (0.022%),” CSAM said.