Brunel Pension Partnership has allocated $1 billion (€0.9 billion) to Canada-based asset manager Fiera Capital’s global equities strategy, highlighting its environmental, social and governance integration as a key reason.
The local government pension scheme (LGPS) pool, one of eight such pools in the country, chose the Canadian firm’s global equities strategy to invest following a “thorough” process to identify the best global high alpha managers.
Matt Betts, senior investment officer at the pension scheme, said: “Responsible investing is key to Brunel’s decision-making, and Fiera demonstrated the ability to integrate environmental, social and governance considerations in a robust way, with a particular focus on governance.”
Fiera Capital’s global equities strategy has generated an annualised return of 14.19% since it was launched in 2009 – an outperformance of over 5% of the MSCI World benchmark.
This segregated mandate from Brunel will be managed by senior portfolio manager Nadim Rizk and a team of one portfolio manager alongside seven analysts.
Rizk said: “Their [Brunel’s] patient approach to long-term investing and focus on quality closely aligns with our process and philosophy.”
Brunel manages around £30 billion on behalf of the local government pension funds of Avon, Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire, as well as the Environment Agency pension fund.
Recently another LGPS, the London Borough of Newham Pension fund doubled its commitment to Fiera Capital’s global agriculture fund. The asset manager now manages three strategies on behalf of UK local government pension schemes in both traditional and non-traditional investments.
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