Shropshire County Pension Fund, Shrewsbury, England, will invest £66 million ($100 million) in Brevan Howard Asset Management's multistrategy fund, Justin Bridges, Shropshire's head of treasury and pensions, said in a telephone interview.
The mutlistrategy fund invests in other pools run by Brevan Howard.
The £1.3 billion pension fund terminated an investment with Man Group's hedge fund-of-funds division FRM Holding, citing fees and poor performance.
“We want to pay a reduced level of fees,” Mr. Bridges said. The pension fund was also disappointed in the FRM fund's “poor performance,” he said, declining to disclose the fund's returns, citing confidentiality agreements.
FRM's Absolute Return Strategies Fund invests in hedge funds run by other managers and charges clients an additional layer of fees to those the hedge funds charge. London-based Man said in May that clients withdrew a net $3.7 billion from its range of hedge funds in the first quarter, the seventh consecutive quarterly outflow.
Shropshire invests £125 million, or 10% of its total assets, in hedge funds, now split evenly between the new Brevan Howard fund and a hedge fund of funds run by BlackRock. The pension fund will keep that investment, Mr. Bridges said.
Spokesmen for Man Group and Brevan Howard declined to comment.
