UK - Geoffrey Henry, the chief executive of the 2.7 billion-pound (4.03 billion-euro) Merchant Navy Pensions Administration Ltd. Merchant Navy Officers Pensions Fund, MNOPF, has retired.

Henry’s retirement follows a revamp of the scheme earlier this year. Henry, 60, who had the role for nearly 20 years, has retired at the end of June and will not be replaced, said the fund’s director of investments, Alick Stevenson.

Stevenson told IPE that he and Peter Greenwood, director of pensions, would be reporting to the chairman of trustees of the fund, which is split in two sections.

The first section is completely closed and is 13% invested in global equities and 87% in fixed income and real estate. The second section, which is closed to new members, is 56.5% invested in UK and global equities, with the balance in high-yield and emerging markets fixed income and real estate.

Stevenson added that in March the fund had partially switched from a relative to absolute return strategy and dismissed three of its asset managers, although he declined to name them.

“We had become dissatisfied with certain managers’ performance, all of which was on a relative return basis. They were perhaps achieving that or close, but still losing us money, because we were probably in the wrong asset class,” he said.

The three new managers were appointed in early March and started managing their portfolios on April 1. Goldman Sachs acted as transition manager.

The new asset managers are South Eastern Asset Management, a US-based firm, to run a global equity absolute return brief, whose value Stevenson did not disclose.

Ashmore Investment Management has an emerging market bond brief and Alliance Capital has a global equity mandate run against the FTSE All World Index.

According to ‘International Pension Funds and their Advisors 2003’ MNOPF’s asset managers are: Insight Investment, Deutsche Asset Management Ltd, Henderson Global Investors, Merrill Lynch Investment managers Ltd, Schroder Investment Management Ltd, Societe Generale Asset Management Holdings, Western Asset Management Co. Ltd, Alliance Bernstein Institutional Investment Management, MNPA Ltd, Morley Fund Management Ltd.

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