ITALY – Laborfonds, the 162.8 million-euro pension fund for workers in the Trentino Alto Adige region, has appointed CDC Ixis to manage a US equity portfolio.

The new mandate will account for around six percent of the total portfolio. Giorgio Valzolgher, director of Laborfonds, said that it had always been intended to allocate a portion of the fund to US equities, but they had wanted to wait until the fund was liquid enough.

The remaining assets of the fund are divided into: eurobonds and Italian equities, run by Sanpaolo IMI; global bonds, run by ING; and European equities, run by Lombard Odier. Around 67% of the entire fund is allocated to bonds, and 30% to equities.

Laborfonds provides pensions for more than 64,000 people, form over 4,000 different companies in the Trentino Alto Adige region.

Returns for the fund for the period January 1 2003 to end July 2003 was 1.04%, beating the benchmark of 0.5%. Since inception the fund has returned 0.89%, compared to a benchmark return of –6.58%.