Italy Roundup: Fon.Te Ups Equities Allocations In Raft Of Changes

Italian pension fund Fon.Te, which covers employees in the trade, tourism and service sectors, is increasing the equity exposure of its growth and balanced sub-funds, it has announced.

It also said it was changing the name of its guaranteed sub-fund.

As part of a periodic review, the €3.8bn pension fund said it has opted to raise the equities proportion of the benchmark of its growth sub-fund — which falls within the pension fund’s balanced category — to 40% from 35%, with the remaining 60% being in bonds.

In the announcement, Fon.Te said: “This change is aimed at increasing the expected level of return, at the same time leading to an increase in market risk associated with share issues and therefore the expected volatility of the managed portfolio.”

Meanwhile the equity portion of the balanced sub-fund’s reference index is being increased to 25% from 20%. Included within this equity portion is a strategic exposure of 2.5% to Italian small caps.

The balanced sub-fund is also being re-named, and will be called the development sub-fund. It will belong to Fon.Te’s “mixed bonds” management category — where funds have equity allocations of 30% or less.

Fon-Te’s dynamic sub-fund, which has the highest equity exposure of all the pension fund’s four compartments, will retain its 60/40 equity/bond weighting, the fund announced.

The guaranteed sub-fund is changing its name to the conservative sub-fund, but its strategic asset allocation will remain unchanged.

All changes are to take place from 1 November, the pension fund said.

Laborfonds offers two mandates

Italian pension fund Laborfonds has launched a tender in search of two external managers to take on mandates within its balanced and dynamic sub-funds.

The Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol regional pension fund, which has €3bn of assets, announced it intends to appoint a single manager for a €940m mandate within the balanced investment line, which had total assets of €2.3bn at the end of August.

The mandate on offer is for active management against a benchmark consisting of 60% equities and 40% bonds.

The fund is also offering a mandate involving all assets in the dynamic sub-fund, which amounted to €121m at the end of August.

This mandate will also be for active management with a 60/40 equity/bond benchmark.

Both contracts are for five years, and the deadline for receipt of tenders is 30 October.