UK – Deutsche Asset Management has lost a 360 million pound (566 million euro) mandate for West Sussex County Council pension fund. The balanced portfolio, equating to half the entire fund, will now be managed by Edinburgh-based Baillie Gifford.

Baillie Gifford joins UBS Global Asset Management as West Sussex’s balanced managers.

The southern English county of West Sussex says that the change was a result of a two-year full procurement exercise on half of the portfolio.

Director for resources and county treasurer Helen Kilpatrick explains the choice of Baillie Gifford: “Baillie Gifford has well defined equity and bond processes, stability of personnel given its partnership structure and has delivered good performance in the past. In our process, quality was defined not only in terms of good historic performance but also the perceived ability of processes to repeat it against a background of the level of risk taken to produce a given return.”

Baillie Gifford recently won a global equity mandate for Dundee City’s 775 million pound (1.22 billion euro) Tayside superannuation fund.

Deutsche Asset Management declined to comment on the situation. The company lost three of its UK equity pension fund managers in October, and has no plans to replace them.



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