Colonial Group said last week it will acquire CIM, the institutional money management unit of The Co-operative Bank. Purchase price wasn't disclosed. CIM manages more than 800 million ($1.2 billion) largely for cooperative and union funds.
CIM will remain a distinct U.K. company for the time being, a spokeswoman said.
The new real estate subcommittee for trustees of the $98 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System intends to recommend in June whether it should begin an RFP process for external real estate advisers for its $5.4 billion real estate program. The fund's core and sector real estate adviser contracts expire June 30; apartment adviser contracts expire Oct. 8.
The fund's real estate staff has recommended modification and extension of real estate adviser agreements. The board's real estate subcommittee expressed a preference to proceed with development of a real estate portfolio strategy without initiating RFPs.
Mexico's Chamber of Deputies voted last week to allow firms from the United States, Canada and Chile to manage the individual retirement accounts envisioned by the country's new social security law.
The vote will allow investment management firms from those countries to compete with Mexican firms to invest the billions of dollars of retirement assets expected to accumulate in the retirement accounts. The legislation also established the overall legal guidelines for the creation of the private companies that will invest worker savings.
Median equity commingled funds beat the S&P 500 in the first quarter, but all but small-cap growth funds lagged the index for the year ended March 31, PIPER's flash report shows.
Median overall equity commingled funds returned 5.8% for the quarter, vs. 5.4% for the S&P 500. For the year ended March 31, the median commingled equity fund returned 30.6%, vs. the S&P 500's 32.1%.
The median small-cap growth fund returned 6.9% for the quarter and 32.3% for the year.
For the quarter, the median growth equity fund returned 6.1% and the median value equity returned fund 5.7%. For the year, median growth equity funds returned 29.9% and median value equity funds 29.4%.
The 9.5 billion rand (about $2.2 billion) Iscor Pension Fund, Pretoria, South Africa, selected Polaris Capital Management for a global equity portfolio of undisclosed size.
The move is part of Iscor's efforts to diversify investments outside of South Africa. Iscor is South Africa's third largest pension fund.
Twentieth Century Mutual Funds is publicly rolling out the series of three strategic asset allocation mutual funds it started earlier this year.
The funds use up to 14 different asset classes and investment styles.
Five clients are offering the funds as defined contribution plan options, including Ethan Allen and Rocco Enterprises.
Domestic and international equity portions of the portfolios are managed by Twentieth Century; fixed income and cash are managed by Benham.
The strategic funds use internally managed separate accounts, which are clones of existing mutual funds from each fund family, as the underlying investments, rather a fund-of-funds construction.
The lead portfolio manager of the new series is Jeffrey Tyler.
The Pension Defense Fund, a group of 48 Lutheran pastors and lay workers, has asked the Supreme Court to review its case against the Board of Pensions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America regarding the South Africa divestiture policy of the church.
The pastors are irate about alleged lost investment opportunity stemming from the divestiture of South Africa-related stocks in the late 1980s and early 1990s from the now more than $3 billion pension fund.
The PDF petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court April 24 to review a decision by the Minnesota State Court of Appeals that ruled the divestiture of the pension assets is a matter of church doctrine and therefore not a matter for review by a civil court.
The Minnesota State Supreme Court upheld the appellate court's decision.
