UK – Fujitsu Services has awarded Barclays Global Investors an active global tactical asset allocation mandate for its 1.3 billion-pound (1.9 billion-euro) pension fund.

“We wanted a risk-controlled way of consistently adding alpha to the pension fund,” David Sillitoe, chairman of the scheme’s investment committee, was quoted as saying in a BGI news release.

“In periods of low equity returns, pension schemes must maximise their portfolio’s potential to generate alpha. BGI’s approach to managing global asset allocation mandates fitted the bill.”

BGI said the mandate will take tactical positions in global equity, fixed income and currency markets by investing a portion of its portfolio into BGI’s pooled Ascent Asset Allocation fund.

BGI added the fund seeks to provide high absolute returns by taking long and short positions in 30 different equity, bond and currency markets worldwide.

“We believe that a global market selection strategy, run with a wide breadth of carefully selected markets and with a minimum of constraints, can consistently add alpha to an investor’s portfolio,” said Paul Farrell, BGI’s director of strategic account management.

“An added advantage of this type of investment strategy is that it has a low expected correlation to equity and bonds.”

Fujitsu Services is the UK arm of Japan-based IT giant Fujitsu Group.