UK - The Tyne & Wear Pension Fund has awarded four investment mandates, worth a total of £1.3bn (€1.5bn), to companies including JP Morgan Asset Management and BlackRock.

The largest award by the £4.3bn local government pension scheme went to Sarasin and JP Morgan Asset Management, together awarded an £850m global equity mandate, with a return target of 2-4%.

The second mandate, valued at £320m, will see BlackRock and Mirabaud share responsibility for UK equity investments, again with a return of 2-4% over a three-year period.

Ian Bainbridge, the scheme's assistant head of pensions, told IPE all four companies would share responsibility for their mandates, with each being allocated an estimated 50% share of mandate assets.

Additionally, Lazard Asset Management proved successful in winning a £90m Japanese equity mandate, targeting 3% returns, while the final award went to TT International for a £50m investment in Asia Pacific ex Japan.

Meanwhile, the Life & Longevity Markets Association (LLMA) has launched a number of documents outlining standards for the longevity risk transfer market.

Expanding on the framework, launched in August, it aims to establish a common approach prior to the launch of a longevity market.

Guy Coughlan, chairman of the LLMA's technical committee and managing director at JP Morgan, said the publications would foster the development of liquidity.

"Our Technical Workstream has worked hard over several months to create these documents with substantial input from our members, who represent leading active participants in the longevity market," he said.

"Over the nine months since its launch, the LLMA has made tremendous progress on several fronts."

He added that the publication of its consultation on the longevity index framework was imminent.

In other news, Aon Hewitt has won a five-year contract for the pension administration duties of Premier Foods' defined benefit scheme.

Malcolm Connelly, group pensions manager at the company, said: "Once the decision to outsource our pension scheme administration was made, Premier Foods and the trustees wanted to find a specialist who demonstrated they could recognise and deliver against the best interests of both our pensions team and our scheme members."

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