Van Lanschot Kempen Investment Management UK has announced it has appointed State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) to manage its Liability Driven Investment (LDI) strategies.
British Airways, BAE Systems, Royal Mail, Centrica, National Grid and Kier are among the big-name UK organisations that have opted for the outsourced CIO model to oversee their multi-billion-pound pension arrangements, and with the market expected to grow to USD3 trillion by end of 2026, we can expect many more asset owners to follow suit.
It has been nearly a year since then Prime Minister Liz Truss’ ‘mini-Budget’ caused a collapse in gilt prices which wiped GBP500 million wiped from the UK’s defined benefit (DB) pension schemes and caused a crisis in confidence in the widespread use of liability-driven investment (LDI) strategies.
TPT Retirement Solutions (TPT), a UK workplace pension scheme, has secured regulatory approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to set up a commercial investment company to provide new services to DB schemes.
The Trustees of the BAE Systems Pension Scheme and BAE Systems Executive Pension Scheme have outsourced the management of their approximately GBP23 billion UK defined benefit pension scheme assets to Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
Morningstar Indexes has conducted a survey of significant asset owners, with Thomas Kuh, Head of ESG Strategy for Morningstar Indexes, commenting on the investment insights that can be drawn from the findings. The survey revealed that the ongoing political campaign in the US to ‘cancel’ ESG investment approaches is among the issues on the minds of asset owners.
SEI has announced that SEI Investments (Europe) Limited (SIEL), its wholly-owned operating subsidiary in the United Kingdom, has entered into an option agreement to acquire the outstanding equity of XPS Pensions (Nexus) Limited, principal employer and scheme funder of the National Pensions Trust (NPT), from its parent company, XPS Pensions Group PLC (XPS).
Cerulli Associates reports that ongoing regulatory change in Europe is spurring more advanced ESG strategies in the pension space, but a lack of suitable products is seeing larger schemes create customised mandates.
After more than a decade of uninterrupted growth, last year global pension assets recorded their largest fall since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, according to the Thinking Ahead Institute’s latest Global Pension Assets Study. It shows that global pension assets now stand at USD47.9 trillion, a fall of 16.7 per cent in a year driven largely by a correction in both fixed income and equity markets.
The management team of global investment consultancy bfinance has undertaken a buyout of the firm, with the purchase of a 51 per cent stake formerly held by Baird Capital. The transaction has been supported by Beach Point Capital Management.
