Mandate roundup: Hampshire Pension Fund, RPMI Railpen, Northern Trust

The UK’s £4.5bn (€5.4bn) Hampshire Pension Fund is to outsource its investments in hedge funds, private equity and infrastructure, accounting for just shy of 10% of all assets.

In a tender notice, the local authority pension scheme said it wished to continue investing in the asset classes, but that it would pick one or more asset managers to oversee the portfolios rather than manage them internally.

To this end, it is tendering three 10-year contracts worth a combined £30m to act as the fund’s infrastructure and hedge fund manager, as well as oversee its private equity and illiquid assets.  

Although the contracts run for 10 years, Hampshire said it would review them after five years and consider whether it wished to maintain the relationship.

The fund is hoping to attract at least five managers to the three standalone tenders, with managers asked to submit all responses by 1 July.

According to the fund’s most recent annual report, it had £175m in private equity holdings at the end of March 2014, a further £136m in hedge funds and an estimated £106m in infrastructure assets.

In other news, Norwegian public broadcaster NRK is looking to launch a defined contribution (DC) pension scheme.

The broadcaster currently maintains a defined benefit arrangement with DNB Livsforsikring, which has more than 4,000 active members but will launch a DC fund by the beginning of 2016.

Any pension provider interested in acting as the DC scheme for NRK must have at least an A rating from Standard & Poor’s or an A3 rating from Moody’s, with at least three large Norwegian companies as clients at present.

Interested parties have until 26 June to submit proposals.

Lastly, RPMI Railpen has chosen Northern Trust as its provider of investment operation outsourcing.

The in-house manager for the £21bn Railways Pension Scheme said the move was part of a shift towards the in-house management of assets, with Northern Trust selected to provide trade matching, derivative processing and active collateral management services.