Horlick sells off rights to manage pension fund (From Hampshire Chronicle)

Horlick sells off rights to manage pension fund

4:04pm Monday 23rd November 2009

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HIGH profile City fund manager Nicola Horlick has sold off the rights to manage a £250m slice of the Hampshire Pension Fund.

Following a bitter struggle with investors fed up with losses at her Bramdean Alternatives fund, she sold the management contract to Aberdeen Asset Management for a reported £4.8m.

The 46,220 members of the Hampshire pension fund, which cares for the retirement income of members from 201 employers, including 11 councils and the county’s police, firefighters and university workers, are the second biggest shareholders in the fund with a £25m stake.

However the Daily Echo understands Ms Horlick, who lives in Bramdean, has also passed on the rights to manage a further £225m belonging to Hampshire pensioners over to Aberdeen, which now controls ten per cent of the £2.4 billion fund.

The sale brings to an end a bitter tussle over control of the fund, which saw the old board replaced five months ago.

Trouble flared with major investors after it emerged that ten per cent of the fund had been placed with fraudster Bernard Madoff and had suffered heavy losses on private equity investments.

Hampshire pensioners lost £7.1m to Madoff ’s pyramid scheme.

The Bramdean Alternatives fund will now be re-branded under the Aberdeen name.

Jonathan Carr, the chairman of Bramdean Alternatives, said: “We believe that the company will benefit from being rebranded and that Aberdeen will be well placed to manage the company’s portfolio.

We look forward to working with them to maximise returns to shareholders.”

Ms Horlick was unavailable for comment.

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