UK - The £650m (€953m) Reuters Pension Fund, the main UK scheme of the news and data group, has awarded a custody mandate to the Bank of New York after a revamp.

The bank said the appointment was the result of a competitive review conducted by scheme actuary Watson Wyatt. The appointment follows a restructuring in the last quarter of last year, said scheme chairman Greg Meekings.

This saw a change in investment strategy towards a more risk-based approach and a "quite considerable" turnover of managers, he added. Managers which lost out included Merrill Lynch Investment Managers and Newton.

The manager roster now includes Legal & General, which runs a passive brief, as well as Western Asset Management, Lazard, New Smith, Alliance Bernstein and Slater. Schroders runs a real estate mandate, Meekings added.

"It's not that we were unhappy with performance," he said. "It was the fact that we switched investment strategy."

The scheme had previously used managers as custodians but the restructuring had given it the opportunity to adopt a single custodian, he said.

"Our review process highlighted the strong calibre of the bank's custody team and its flexible approach," Meekings was quoted as saying in a Bank of New York statement.

"We were impressed by their expertise and technology, which we believe will meet our high standards in areas like performance measurement, risk management and reporting."

"This appointment reflects our experience and success in the custody market," said bank managing director Benjie Fraser.

"We are committed to building on the Bank's position as a market leader in this sector, and winning the business of prestigious companies such as Reuters shows how strong our offering is."

The Reuters Pension Fund is a defined contribution/defined benefit scheme with around 8,000 members

Meekings, Reuters' former chief information officer, is also chairman of the Reuters Supplementary Pension Scheme, a DB scheme for directors and senior managers.

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