UK - The  £430m (€641m) London Borough of Waltham Forest pension fund is completely overhauling its investment strategy in a move from multi-asset to specialist managers.

"Our investment strategy had not been reviewed for quite a few years. So we thought we'd do a complete overhaul rather than a piece-by-piece change," chief financial officer Graham Kirwan told IPE.

Currently the fund's assets are managed by Aberdeen Asset Management and UBS Global Asset Management in three multi-asset mandates with UBS holding a passive £125m mandate and an active £169m.

The scheme is looking to appoint a global equities (ex-UK) manager for a £155m mandate, a UK equities manager for £185m, a diversified fixed income manager for £70m and a global tactical asset allocation (GTAA) manager for £15m.

Overall, the asset allocation will remain more or less the same with 79% equities investment (up from 74%), 16% fixed income (15%) and 9% property (8.2%).

The scheme is advised by bfinance on manager selection but Kirwan said that no investment adviser company had been consulted on the change in the investment strategy.

The deadline for participation in the tender is 26 January 2007.

Meanwhile, the £1.2bn Suffolk County Council Pension Fund has renewed its global custody mandate with State Street.

The council had received eight applications for the position and Hymans Robertson assisted the fund in choosing the custodian, corporate finance manager Peter Edwards told IPE.

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