EUROPE – The £3.2bn (€3.8bn) Kent County Council Superannuation Fund is looking to appoint as many as eight managers to a global equity framework agreement.

According to the tender, the fund would allocate as much as £200m towards the mandate and is looking to outperform the MSCI All Countries World index by 2.5-4% on a 3-5 year rolling basis.

It said it would consider both segregated and pooled vehicles and potentially split the mandate among several managers.

Parties interested in the four-year framework have until 18 March to contact Hymans Robertson’s Glasgow office for further information.

Kent currently gains the majority of its equity exposure from fund investments.

According to its 2012 annual report, it had £502m invested in overseas equity - £192m with GMO’s Developed World Equity unit trust and a further £247m with MPF International Equity.

In other news, the £1bn Shropshire County Pension Fund is looking for at least one manager to oversee £220m in global equity.

The local authority pension fund said it would look to invest the money, allocated to passive equity globally, in segregated or pooled accounts, adding that it was open to appointing more than one manager.

The fund did not publish any performance expectations, stating only that it would provide managers with a specific performance objective.

It said no more than six managers would be shortlisted once applicants had been evaluated based on their the request for proposals (RFP) questionnaire.

The fund, according to the most recent annual report, employs seven equity managers, with MFS managing a £106m pooled global equity investment.

Baillie Gifford, Legal & General Investment Management, Majedie and F&C Asset Management, as well as Martin Currie and Goldman Sachs Asset Management, also oversee direct equity mandates - ranging in size from £46m to £153m.

Interested parties have until 22 March to contact Aon Hewitt’s Bristol office for further information and can apply until 27 March.

Lastly, the £40m (€46m) pension fund for print and imaging product supplier Epson has hired SEI as its fiduciary manager.

SEI will tackle the implementation of asset and liability-matching strategies, the construction of an efficient investment portfolio and the selection and replacement of managers to run the portfolio.

Epson trustees said they wanted to manage the scheme’s funding level more actively and effectively, as well as put in place a process that would allow for more “nimble” investment decisions.    

They said they also wished to delegate the day-to-day management of the scheme to focus more time on “strategic objectives”.

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