UK - Cornwall Council's local government pension fund lost £215m (€248.6m) in the year to 31 March 2009, figures have revealed.

The unaudited statement of accounts for 2008/09 showed the value of the pension scheme dropped from £1.004bn to £789m, as investment income fell by £5.4m and the market value of the scheme's investments slipped by £214.8m.

Cornwall's figures showed the total return for the fund was -22.4%, against a benchmark return of -21.6%, although Alliance Bernstein's UK equity portfolio produced the worst return of -43.6%, against a benchmark of -29.3%.

The best return was posted by Insight Investment Management, at -6.5%, which runs 16.5% of the total fund after "the majority of the fixed interest stocks, including UK public sector and index linked had been merged or converted during the year into one large pooled vehicle, a unit trust bond operated by Insight".

However, this was still below the benchmark target of -3%, while Newton Investment Management - responsible for the largest portfolio in the pension fund, equivalent to 22.1% of assets - managed to outperform its benchmark return of -22.9% with a yield of -20.3%.

And Capital International, which runs 20.4% of the pension scheme, produced a return of -21.9%, slightly below the benchmark target of -21.2%, while Alliance Bernstein's global equity portfolio yielded -38.9%, against a target of -19.8%, and GMO and RREEF produced -24.5% and -30.3% respectively.

Cornwall noted in the report that the scheme had "like other pension funds suffered at the consequence of harsh financial market conditions in the year".

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