UK - Wiltshire Pension Fund is looking to implement a £500m (€568m) currency hedge, aiming to reduce the volatility of its overseas equity portfolio.

The local authority scheme - which, according to its most recent annual report, had £1.1bn in assets under management - said it hoped to appoint several managers in an effort to minimise volatility, as well as the "cash outflows associated with the hedge".

It said purely absolute return currency mandates would not be considered, but that both discretionary and non-discretionary dynamic hedging would be permitted.

As of March 2010, the most current annual report, Wiltshire invested £340m in overseas equities, but has likely seen this exposure increase as it has based the size of the mandate around its overseas equity portfolio of £500m.

Managers interested should request more information through Hymans Robertson's Glasgow office and have until 7 November to apply for the four-year contract.

Meanwhile, the £1.4bn Dorset County Pension Fund has put two mandates out to tender, looking to invest a total of £120m in emerging markets (EM) and alternative growth assets.

The first mandate, for a £50m global emerging market equities mandate, will consider both pooled and segregated funds, with Dorset aiming to outperform the MSCI EM index by 2% a year after management fees.

It rules out the use of funds of hedge funds or long/short funds and asks that the long-only manager have a two-year track record.

The second mandate, for a £70m active diversified alternatives or growth mandate, will only consider pooled mandates, with the local authority aiming for returns in excess of Libor by 3-6% after fees.

"The portfolio should be actively managed, either through a single directly managed portfolio, a fund of external managers or a combination of the two," Dorset added in its mandate, again ruling out funds of hedge funds for the diversified portfolio.

Managers have until 14 November to apply, with further information available through Bfinance.

This is the third tender by Dorset County since the beginning of October, having recently launched a search for managers to implement a hedging strategy due to its £370m deficit.

Finally, the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) has appointed Aviva as provider for its employees' top-up scheme.

The group personal pension (GPP) put out to tender in July will allow employees of the auto-enrolment scheme - who will be enrolled into NEST - to pay in beyond its contribution limit of £4,200 per annum, in 2011 terms.

Commenting on the appointment, NEST chief executive Tim Jones said: "We expect many medium-sized and larger employers to use NEST alongside another pension scheme in this way."