UK – Employee benefits and consultancy firm, Gissings, has won the mandate to provide full services to the £25m (€40m) defined benefit (DB) and £10m (€16m) defined contribution (DC) schemes of Manganese Bronze, the London taxi manufacturer.

The two schemes have approximately 1,800 members.

Gissings will begin advisory and actuarial service provision immediately, with administration and accounting services coming into effect from next January.

Elsewhere, Gissings says that complying with the Myners review recommendations and the government’s subsequent investment principles will be “very hard and very expensive for small schemes.”

Says Brendan Reville, investment director at Gissings,: “By publishing proposed measures of effectiveness, the government has demonstrated its commitment to changing the way pension schemes operate. It will come as a shock to those employers who thought that they had effectively washed their hands of any responsibility for investment decision making by switching to DC arrangements.”

Reville also finds it “disappointing” that the government has failed to give a timescale for the abolition of the minimum funding requirement and introduction of its replacement.