UK - The £1.2bn (€1.6bn) North Yorkshire County Council Pension Fund has awarded a £680m global equity transition management mandate to Mellon.

The new mandate has been running since the beginning of October, a spokesman for the fund said.

The move follows a major review of the fund's equity investment strategy towards more specialist fund managers, which began late last year.

"We had a two-phase review, the first phase was in 2005 and this is the second phase, which began in late 2005," the spokesman added.

The fund has not changed its managers, but rather it has changed the mandates.

Standard Life, Baillie Gifford and Barclays Global Investors (BGI) were previously the fund managers on the global equity side and they all managed to the same customised global equity benchmark.

"We have moved to a little bit more to specialised mandates such that Standard Life has a UK equity portfolio, BGI a global equity ex-UK, and Baillie Gifford has two mandates now: one global equity high alpha and the other is a long term global growth unconstrained," the fund said.

According to the spokesman the portfolio sizes are still very similar to the previous sizes.

Furthermore, the fund has created a portfolio for a global tactical asset allocation manager, for which it is currently reviewing tenders.

In June the fund - which completed the restructuring of its portfolio last year - axed JP Morgan as its custodian after almost five years.

A month later the fund appointed ABN Amro Mellon Global Securities Services to provide custody, investment accounting and performance measurement services for assets totalling £1bn.

The fund decided for Mellon due to the "obvious synergy there is from a technology point of view and sharing of information with using someone linked to the custodian".

The fund is being advised by Philip Williams, as independent investment adviser.

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