The £300m (E457 m) pension fund of De Beers’ diamond marketing arm, the Diamond Trading Company, has appointed SEI Investments as manager for a £117m UK and global equity mandate.
SEI is the world’s largest manager-of-managers investment company and has enjoyed numerous mandate wins across Europe in the last two years, as the strategy gains increasing acknowledgement for its cost-efficiency.
Says Nigel Down, institutional client service director at SEI: “The fact that DTC has decided to opt for a manager-of-managers solution is clear evidence of the growing popularity of this approach.” The mandate win is SEI’s largest from a UK pension fund to date,
o The company also was appointed by the AEP Energy Services Generation pension fund in the UK to run a £30m (E45.4m) global equity mandate for its defined benefit pension fund.
Commenting on the appointment, Paul Harrop, director of human resources at AEP Energy Services says: “We considered all the various options available for the management of our UK pension plan and found the concept of outsourcing the selection and monitoring of fund managers attractive.”