UK – The 500 million pound (703 million euro) pension scheme of Oxfordshire County Council has replaced Deutsche Asset Management and Schroders with UBS, Baillie Gifford, Alliance Bernstein and Legal & General as part of a move to find better performance.

The new managers will be in place from July 1 this year, the fund said. The fund has also awarded a global custody mandate to ABN Amro Mellon, which went live in April.

Barry Phillips, assistant treasurer at Oxfordshire, said the fund has shifted from a balanced to a specialist strategy. “We’re looking to increase performance,” he said, adding that specialists were the best way to do that.

Deutsche and Schroders both had around 50% each of the portfolio, Phillips said. They had also provided custody services. The appointment of new managers meant that it needed to appoint a custodian.

Phillips said the fund also wanted to conform to the Myners principle that custody should be separate from management.

UBS Global Asset Management was awarded a 145 million pound multi-assets mandate and a 25 million pound property mandate. Baillie Gifford won a 105 million pound UK equities mandate while Alliance Bernstein was awarded a 145 million pound global equities mandate. Legal & General won 75 million pounds in UK fixed interest.

The fund has also awarded a mandate for custody, investment accounting, performance measurement and securities lending to ABN Amro Mellon Global Securities Services.

ABN Amro Mellon’s head of communications, Silvia Maulini, declined to comment on the financial terms of the deal.

Nadine Chakar, the company’s chief executive, said that there were “a lot of deals in the pipeline” in the UK local authority market, worth several billion pounds in assets. She said the firm has a team of around 10, under Iain Harper, that focuses on that market.

The firm is a 50/50 joint venture between the Dutch bank and US-based Mellon Financial - it has six billion euros of UK local authority funds under custody.

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