DENMARK - The 9.7 billion-euro Danish administration company for occupational pension funds Pensionskassernes Administration has awarded State Street Global Advisors a 100 million-dollar (81.7 million-euro) active Japanese equity mandate.

Earlier this year, PKA awarded SSGA an enhanced screened US equity mandate.

PKA’s head of equities, Claus Joergensen, told IPE that PKA was not new to Japanese equities.

Of the current 100 million-dollar investment, half was new money and half had been diverted from another asset manager, which Joergensen declined to name.

SSGA, the investment management arm of State Street Corp., said that worldwide, approximately 500 million dollars have been invested in the strategy in the first half of 2004

“The process uses a combination of value, sentiment and technical measures. It spreads the portfolio allocation over several smaller active positions, with tightly controlled sector weightings,” SSGA said in a statement.

“We are pleased that PKA recognises the expertise of our investment professionals and the track record of our active equity strategies which have consistently outperformed against their benchmarks,” said Benoît Fally, managing director at the firm.

Alan Brown, group chief investment officer and Peter Leahy, chief operating officer, has been appointed interim co-heads at SSGA following the recent death of chairman and chief executive Tim Harbert.

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