UK - The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead has tendered a £410m (€599m) currency overlay mandate for the £1.3bn Berkshire Pension Fund.

The provider will "manage the investment of a specialist passive hedging and active currency overlay mandate" for the fund, the tender document states. One manager is being sought.

The tender is being run by consultant bfinance for the borough, which is located to the west of London.

The award criteria are for the most economically advantageous tender in terms of quality, technical merits and price. The deadline for requests for tenders is June 12.

The tender comes as more schemes are looking at currency overlay. Just yesterday it emerged that the Leicestershire County Council Pension Fund had awarded active currency overlay mandates.

Other funds recently looking at the area include Cornwall and the Lothian Pension Fund.

According to the most recent minutes of the Berkshire Pension Fund Panel, members were informed that "although the strong equity performance was encouraging and very good for the assets of the fund, unfortunately because bond yields had fallen the liabilities of the Fund had also risen".

"The lower bond yields were primarily due to the fact that there were insufficient bonds in issue to meet the current demand as pension funds sought to increase their investment in bonds to reduce the volatility of the performance of their assets."

Topics