The £255m (€370m) London Borough of Havering pension fund has awarded Standard Life Investments, the UK fund manager, an £80m UK equity mandate and Alliance Bernstein, a US fund manager, a £52m global equity mandate.

The appointments deny Merrill Lynch Investment Managers a slice of the business. It had managed the fund's entire multi-asset balanced active portfolio but has lost out on a big mandate in the scheme's switch to specialist investment.