DENMARK - The €9.7bn pension administration company Pensionskassernes Administration has awarded Russell a US small-cap equities mandate worth around $140m (€110m).

The move follows PKA’s award of an $80m emerging market equities mandate to Citigroup Asset Management last week.

Russell, which says 2003 saw a record number of new institutional clients, said in a statement that PKA had also appointed its implementation services team for transition management.

“We are looking forward to working with Pensionskassernes Administration and building a long-term relationship,” said Jon Bailie, Russell’s managing director of institutional investment services at Russell.

“They join an increasing number of pension plans across Europe that have made the move to a multi-manager approach to investing.” He said Russell expects the trend for Danish funds to use multi-manager funds to continue.

Russell also said that it had won a separate multi-manager mandate from another Danish pension fund, though it did not provide any further details.

Russell, part of Northwestern Mutual, manages around €22bn in assets from Europe.

Russell also said that it has hired Liisa Salojarvi as assistant director, client service, in its institutional investment services team. She will work multi-manager clients in the UK and continental Europe and joins from Merrill Lynch Investment Managers where she was a client account manager.

Mike Clark, director, client service, said: “2003 saw a record number of new institutional clients choosing Russell’s multi-manager solutions, representing new assets under management of over £1.6bn.”

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