Mark Ashworth, a director of Law Debenture, has been appointed to chair the governance committee of the BT group self-invested personal pension (Sipp).

The Greater Manchester Pension Fund is setting up a special situations fund representing 5% of its assets to target market opportunities.

A few people at the top got greedy, and so the government has sought to penalise every high earner.

High net worth individuals may move their savings into offshore bonds to avoid the penal taxation introduced by the Budget.

Accountancy firm Mazars is being investigated over advice it gave trustees of the First Quench Pension Fund.

A Bermudan insurer is aiming to undercut providers offering buy-in contracts for deferred members of pension schemes by exploiting the island’s flexible financial regulations.

The Personal Accounts Delivery Authority and the government are consulting on the scheme order and rules for personal accounts.

The £1.4bn Royal County of Berkshire Pension Fund has become one of the first local authority schemes to use a managed account platform for hedge funds.

The Pensions Institute at Cass Business School has called on the government to issue longevity bonds.

Contingent assets may prove too complicated to be considered as a way of shoring up scheme funding, according to an expert trustee panel.

Around five FTSE 100 companies are expected to carry out enhanced transfer valuation (ETV) exercises this year, according to Prudential.

The gains in the equity market last month were offset by falling annuity rates for defined contribution (DC) members approaching retirement, according to Aon Consulting.

Midlands-based pension funds are overly represented among those that have entered the Pension Protection Fund (PPF).

The average administration cost per member of a scheme of between 10,000 and 40,000 lives has risen to £48 a year.

Trustees’ funding expectations have grown from 70% of the buyout cost to 75% over the last year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The changes raise more questions about practicability than they answer, which will lead to more consultation and further legislation.

Investors are keen to grab opportunities as the market slowly begins its recovery, but risk still plays a key part in any decision-making. Pensions Week gets the lowdown from four key players in the industry.

DCLG is concerned the governance requirements do not cover all the areas that LGPS funds need to consider.

It’s not hard to find bodies suggesting that time be called on public sector pensions – the Confederation of British Industries, the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the Tories, and now Gordon Brown has even asked for alternatives to final salary pensions for MPs to be considered. Newspapers stagger under the weighty accusations of feather-bedding and gold-plated pensions. So is the clock ticking for decent pension provision in the public sector?

I am not on Facebook or Friends Reunited. I do not Twitter, tweet, text or blog. I do not Askjeeves who I am each morning or check where I am via Google Earth. I am not a Wikipedia entry or on Myspace, and I do not Flickr or have a Second Life.

For the past two decades, the staple fare of active investors and investment managers has been to try to outperform market returns.

Alpha has been a rare animal in recent times, and only the keenest and most skilled of 130/30 managers will be able to hunt it down, says Brandon Michael.

Investment services provider Cardano has appointed Santiago Pinson and Nathalie Sims (pic) to its investment management team.

Sacker & Partners has appointed Chirag Ghelani (pic) and Ferdinand Lovett as assistant solicitors.

The International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) has appointed Carl Rosén as executive director.

Just Retirement has appointed John Pyburn as associate director of IFA sales.