Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Legal & General Investment Management have lost mandates worth more than £2bn (€3bn) after the Universities Superannuation Scheme, one of the UK's largest private pension funds, moved the money in-house.

Peter Moon, chief investment officer of the fund, said after the change about 80% of the scheme's assets would be managed internally, a proportion that is higher than most UK schemes and closer to large Dutch pension funds. Moon did not say the mandate switch was anything to do with the performance of either manager. Goldman Sachs ran about £1.2bn in a high-alpha UK equity mandate. From March 2004, when it was appointed, to January 2005, it returned 7.1%, against 12.1% for the benchmark index. A Goldman spokeswoman said: "We took steps to address underperformance with the hire of Mark Beveridge, chief investment officer, and William Howard, senior portfolio manager and co-director of research. "Goldman Sachs is focused on enhancing our international active equity business under Mark's leadership. " Legal & General ran a similar amount in an active corporate bond portfolio, achieving returns of 5.8% over the same period in line with its index. The manager declined to comment on the mandate loss. USS has nearly £22bn in funds under management and, following the switch, has only two external fund managers – Wellington Management and Capital International – running global equity mandates, each worth about 9% of the fund. It has not adjusted its managers since March 2004, when £4bn changed hands. The scheme parted company with Schroders, Baillie Gifford and Merrill Lynch Investment Managers in favour of Goldman, Wellington and Legal & General. USS looks after the pension assets of more than 200,000 academics and other staff in UK higher education and has 370 member institutions.