LUXEMBOURG – Fund firm European Fund Administration says it is now “ideally positioned” to support the European pension market.

EFA said was “ideally positioned today to support successfully the much-expected liberalisation of the pension fund market in Europe”. It added that it won another administration mandate for an Assep last year.

Asseps are pensions savings associations set by Luxembourg in 1999 in anticipation of the development of the pan-European pensions market.

The comments come as the company reported that its operating profit rose by almost 28% last year. "Operating profit for 2003 was 4,012,480 euros up 27.85% over 2002," EFA said in a release. It has 69 billion euros under administration.

It added: “In a difficult business context, with a growing number of fund mergers and restructurings, EFA achieved a 6.48% increase in the number of sub-funds under administration (from 1,080 at year-end 2002 to 1,150 at year-end 2003).”

It added that the total number of sub-funds domiciled in Luxembourg fell by 3.80% over the same period.

The firm said it won administration mandates from “three new internationally recognized promoters and one hedge fund promoter” in 2003. The new assets totalled 4.7 billion euros. EFA also said it won mandates from two insurance companies. As at the end of 2003, it administered 138 insurance funds.

EFA has launched an analytics service “to provide performance attribution and risk analysis reporting”, which is operational at two clients.

EFA was set up in 1996. It is run by chief executive Thomas Seale, who became president of the trade body Association Luxembourgeoise des Fonds d'Investissement, or ALFI, in May last year.

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