NETHERLANDS - PGB, the €9bn Dutch pension fund for the printing industry, has awarded Intech a $600m (€459m) US enhanced equity mandate, the firm announced today.

Intech, a subsidiary of Janus Capital Group, will manage an enhanced US large-cap core equity strategy benchmarked against the MSCI USA Index, according to the firm.

The news comes after PGB announced earlier this month that it will contract out most of its equity portfolio to specialized external managers: the €3.6bn move of the scheme involves 90% of its equity, and will take effect as of January 1.

"Hiring Intech to manage a portion of our US equities portfolio is a reflection of our continuing strategy to outsource to regional specialists," commented PGB chief investment officer Dirk Wieman.

Also, PGB announced that it has awarded Altis Investment Management with a €4bn equity portfolio fiduciary advisory mandate.

"The assignment of Altis will commence on 1 January 2007 and follows after PGB's strategic decision to allocate most of its equity investments into a multi-manager strategy," the firm said.

Altis will provide GBF, asset manager of the fund, investment staff with manager monitoring on currently selected managers, aggregated risk management and advice on new manager selection.

Wieman said: "We decided to insource the additional know-how we need to manage our multi-manager strategy, rather than to outsource the multi-manager portfolio to an investment fiduciary."

According to Wieman, the cooperation enables PGB to "integrate the fiduciary model in our investment process while at the same time staying in control to make the decisions when changes need to be made."

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