Winners were chosen due to their influence in the European pensions industry and achievements in the last 12 months.
I’d like to thank you, our readers, for the many nominations you sent in for the list—click here to see how yours ranked.
Congratulations to Jamie Stuttard, the winner of our top spot, who impressed all of the team with use of credit derivative options very effectively for pension fund assets in the second quarter of 2010, ensuring that during the Greek crisis, Schroders’ funds under his stewardship had a lower volatility of performance than competitors. With techniques such as these, the Schroder Sterling Broadmarket Fund has only had a single negative quarter relative to the benchmark in the last nine.
Under his leadership, Schroders’ European and UK Fixed Income business reached record assets under management in 2010, with broader team assets having grown over 150% at Schroders in the last two years. 2010 saw new consultant endorsements from leading pension fund consultants for GBP Agg products and a 13th percentile position in EUR Aggregate products in 2010.
With outperformance in 2010, Stuttard has now outperformed benchmarks in eight out of the last nine years in UK pension fund assets, including outperformance in 2002 and 2008, the most challenging years in fixed-income spread products in the last two decades. Pretty impressive results.
Congratulations also to Jacob De Wit of F&C, Mike Craston of L&G, Keith Guthrie of Cardano, and Pascal Blanqué of Amundi, who also made our top five.
A special mention also goes to Alan Whalley, UK Chief Executive of Mercer, who won the top slot of our consultants list.
PSE Dash
Following popular demand, the PLANSPONSOR Europe team has also launched a weekly email update with news, events, video, and people moves—the PSE Dash.
The emails, sent mid-week, will cover all things pensions-, benefits-, and investments-related, as well as financial and political world developments—all viewed from the plan sponsor perspective.
The emails are free to receive.
To subscribe go to www.pages05.net/assetinternationalinc/AssetInternationalSubscriptionCenter/ and fill in the short online form, selecting the PLANSPONSOR Europe Dash option.
PSE Events
I am also pleased to announce another first—the inaugural PLANSPONSOR Europe Conference, which will be held in the luxurious Hotel Arts in Barcelona 25th-27th October.
With a mix of local European and multinational topics, speaker sessions, panels, and breakout discussions, we’d like to think that our event will become the new essential fixture on your conference calendar. Topics to be discussed include pan-European pension regulation and the role of the European Commission, DC investments, sovereign debt and economic developments, scheme member communication, the reliance of Eastern European pensions on political developments, UK pension reform, Western European shifts to International Accounting Standards, insurance solutions, and combating longevity risk.
At that event, we will also be holding our inaugural PLANSPONSOR Europe Reader Awards with a dinner and entertainment. Voting for those awards will open in May. To receive an email with details on how to vote, make sure you are signed up to receive our PSE Dash alerts or keep an eye on our news section online.
The good news keeps coming since, for plan sponsors/trustees/pension fund managers, attendance at the conference is free!
For more information on any of our events, go to our website events section at www.plansponsor.com/Europe/Events.aspx.
To register an interest in attending, please email me (kblackler@assetinternational.com) or Carol Popkins (cpopkins@assetinternational.com), or if you are interested in sponsoring this or any other Asset International European event, email Foster Wright (fwright@assetinternational.com) or Simon Holloway (sholloway@assetinternational.com).