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NYCERS, the, $45bn (€33bn) New York City Employees Retirement Scheme has launched two RI investment tenders. The first is for sustainable and environmental active management in a portfolio of global companies. The second is an activist equity mandate. The scheme says the values of the mandates have yet to be decided.
Contact: Michael Musuraca.

The €746m ($1.1bn) Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland pension fund is looking for one or more active European equity SRI managers. The mandate/s will be valued €60m to €80m and in a segregated or pooled structure. London-based consultant bfinance is advising.

Laborfonds, the €451m ($639m) Italian defined contribution pension fund for workers in the region of Trentino-South Tyrol, has tendered for investment managers to run an initial €20m global ethical portfolio. Italian consultant Pensplan is advising.
Contact: Angelo Mutinelli, Pensplan.h6. Finished searches

PGGM, the €85bn ($121bn) Dutch pension fund for healthcare and social workers, has hired US asset manager GMO for a 15-year $200m sustainable forestry mandate. The fund said the mandate could be extended by a further five years.
PGGM will invest in the GMO Long Horizons Forestry Fund, which invests in forestry plantations in North and South America and the Asia/Pacific region. The fund will invest primarily in forestry projects that qualify for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. It said it viewed forestry as a “stable investment, not least because trees grow regardless of economic cycles. Timber is one of the few commodities that have appreciated faster than inflation over the long term.”

The £1.5bn Environment Agency pension scheme in the UK has awarded Royal London Asset Management the contract to manage a £55m (€81.5m) UK corporate bonds mandate with SRI restrictions on the type of investments selected. EIRIS, the SRI research, was selected by Royal London to provide the asset manager with data for its ethical bond trust and will support the implementation of the Environment Agency’s SRI strategy. Mercer Investment Consulting, Rathbone Greenbank and b-finance were the scheme’s advisers for the mandate search.