ITALY- The 800 million-euro Italian pension scheme for chemical workers, Fonchim, has re-tendered five mandates.

The mandates are: two balanced global briefs, one balanced international equities as well as small-cap US and European equities.

The industry-wide pension scheme launched a request for proposal in November for nine managers to run mandates made up of seven combinations of asset classes, including global bonds but it has now re-tendered five mandates.

The fund said it was in the final stages of selection for the balanced global and small-cap mandates, with the result due in mid-February.

The fund is organised in three compartments: cash, stability and growth, whose benchmarks were internally decided in 2003.

The decision to re-tender came a week after the administrative board of the 114,000-member group found the number of applications “was not sufficient”, Fonchim stated.

Candidates included Pioneer, ABN Amro, Credit Agricole, BNP Paribas, Mellon and San Paolo IMI Wealth Management, currently one of the six fund managers, a list that includes Pioneer Investments, Generali Asset Management and RAS asset management.

Pioneer Investment, currently running a bond and an equity mandate confirmed it has “presented a new application for the mandates mentioned in the request for proposal”.

The administrative board says it will judge managers on their track record over the three years to the third quarter of 2003 but “on meeting the administrative board, short-listed candidates will be formally required to single out a resident in_Italy correspondent as speaker for the fund”.

“A contribution flow of about 160 million euros is expected between 2004 and 2007” Fonchim also said.

The original tender was believed to be one of the largest manager searches among Italy’s second pillar pension schemes.

The deadline for the request for proposal had been set at December 31 for Italian applications and January 14 for English ones.

Fonchim currently uses six fund managers: Generali, Ras, Unipol, Pioneer, San Paoli-Imi and Duemme, part of the Esperia Group, a joint venture between Mediolanum and Mediobanca.

State Street Global Advisors also manages part of Fonchim’s fixed income assets under a sub-advisory agreement to Banca Esperia. This arrangement followed the decision by Mediolanum and State Street to discontinue the management of second pillar pension scheme assets through the Mediolanum State Street joint venture.

Meanwhile, Fopadiva, the pension fund for workers in the Valle d’Aosta region, has tendered for book-keeping and deposit bank services.

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