We covered yesterday the plan proposed by London Mayor Boris Johnson to merge the country’s 39,000 public sector pension plans into one scheme, which would invest in building and updating the UK’s roads, airports, railroads and other infrastructure.
Today, one of the UK’s largest pension funds has come out in support of the plan. From the Financial Times:
The £4.9bn London Pensions Fund Authority (LPFA) said it supported the London Mayor’s call for tens of thousands of public sector schemes to merge, with the money used for infrastructure investment.
[…]
“The overhead costs of running a large number of pension funds can run into billions of pounds,” said Edmund Truell, chairman of the LPFA.
“We have been trying to go direct with our investments and cut the layers of costs. I would consider it ‘job done’ if we were absorbed into a sovereign wealth fund.”
Pension investment advisers said it was far from perfect that so many small funds manage their investments individually but they would be concerned about the creation of one enormous fund.
“Many local authority funds are too small to be able to make individual investments in alternative assets or to have a bespoke liability-driven risk management strategy,” said Ros Altmann, a pensions expert.
“However, I would be concerned about too much concentration as well and would prefer to see a number of large funds, not just one or two.”
The Mayor originally proposed his plan in a weekend op-ed in the Telegraph, which can be read here.
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