EUROPE - Investment and Pensions Europe (IPE) is teaming up with the EDHEC business school in France to launch a new awards programme recognising excellence in institutional asset management.

Professor Noel Amenc, director of the EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre, said the IPE/EDHEC Institutional Asset Management Awards (IAMAs) will be the first time European institutional asset managers have been judged based on objective and transparent criteria.

More specifically, the IAMAs will compromise of 15 awards assessed through a quantitative evaluation of the quality of the institutional asset management offerings from investment firms in Europe and will take account "not only of the performance of active portfolio management (alpha) but also of the relevance of the long-term allocation choices (beta) and the quality of risk management", under EDHEC's new asset management assessment framework.

"Having successfully completed the methodology for the first European rankings of asset management companies based on a genuine measure of alpha, the Alpha League Table, in partnership with EuroPerformance, EDHEC is delighted to be joining forces with the publication of reference for European institutional investors, IPE, to produce institutional asset management rewards based on state-of-the-art financial research," said Amenc.

Results of the awards will be unveiled at a gala dinner in Paris on June 12, during the EDHEC Institutional Days being held at CNIT on June 12 and 13 2008, to an invited audience of investors, asset managers, investment banks and other industry advisers and suppliers.

For more information about the awards, contact Fred Monteil, Events Director at IPE, on +44 (0) 20 7261 4616 or fred.monteil@ipe.com or Peter O'Kelley, marketing director at EDHEC on +33 (0)4 93 18 78 23 or peter.okelley@edhec-risk.com.

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