Dorset Pension Fund reshuffles managers on £500m of equity mandates

The £2.1bn (€3bn) Dorset County Pension Fund has appointed three managers to invest nearly £500m in global equity mandates after undergoing a review.

At present, Pictet Asset Management and INTECH Investment Management, a subsidiary of the Janus group, manage the local government pension scheme’s allocations, but the managers were put under review earlier this year.

Dorset invested approximately one-quarter of its assets in global equities – £350m with Pictet, £111m with Intech and £64m with JP Morgan Asset Management through an emerging markets mandate.

Intech manages US equity investments, while Pictet manages global equities and has done sone since its appointment 25 years ago.

Dorset has now announced three new managers for global equity investments, appointing Investec Asset Management, Wellington Management International and Allianz Global Investors.

Investec and Wellington will now share a £240m allocation to global active (ex UK) and emerging markets, while Allianz was awarded a global smart beta equity mandate of the same size.

Investec and Wellington have been appointed on long-only active management mandates, with a preference for fundamental discretion with the managers, over systematic strategies.

Allianz’s smart beta strategy will manage indices on a factor basis or a fundamental strategy, and also exclude emerging market stocks.

The mandate winners came out on top of a manager selection process that generated 39 responses, with consultancy bfinance running the process.

According to Dorset’s annual report for the 2013-14 financial year, Pictet underperformed its benchmark on an annual, triennial and five-year basis, down 1 percentage point over the latter.

Intech outperformed its benchmark by 50 basis points over the year, 40bps over three years and 30bps over five.