UK – Staffordshire County Council has appointed Goldman Sachs Asset Management to run a 970 million pound (1.4 billion euro) asset allocation mandate for its pension fund. The total fund size is 1.3 billion pounds (1.9 billion euros).

The asset allocation mandate monitors the exposure of the seven underlying equity portfolios managed by the Council’s equity managers, and seeks to ensure that the portfolio is in line with its strategic benchmarks. It is implemented as an overlay and aims to generate excess return through its country and currency decisions.

Says Sally Marshall of the UK institutional business development team at GSAM: “Funds today typically have a number of specialist managers, none of whole have overall responsibility for asset allocation.

“Our strategy breaks out the elements of asset allocation so that differences in relative value within bond, equity and currency markets can be profited from, as well as the traditional asset class timing call.”

Last week GSAM was also appointed by the 11.7 billion euro Dutch Pensioenfonds Metalektro to manage a 750 million euro asset allocation and active currency mandate.

GSAM manages 346 billion dollars (306 billion euros) in assets worldwide.

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