Institutional investors' search for managers grew globally by 22% last year and pension funds are likely to show more interest in liability driven investment, data from Mercer reveals.

GLOBAL - Hedge funds managers are divided on what effect greater regulation will have on their products, a survey showed.

CANADA - The Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) has finalised the implementation of an asset liability management (ALM) solution provided by Ortec.

ITALY - A reform of the Italian pension system including auto-enrolment into a mandatory defined contribution fund should be considered in the near future to push Italians to save more for retirement, industry figures said.

ITALY - Italian schemes are increasingly reviewing their asset allocation and looking to offer lifestyling arrangements to their members in the wake of the losses incurred during the crisis, Towers Watson managing consultant for Italy Fabio Carniol said....

ITALY ¬- Italian pension funds have been increasingly looking at fiduciary management solutions in the first quarter of this year, BlackRock head of Italian institutional business Alberto Salato said.

SWITZERLAND - Banking group SYZ is set to acquire State Street Global Advisors' (SSgA) institutional Swiss fixed income activities.

NETHERLANDS/SOUTH AFRICA - APG, the investment arm of giant Dutch pension fund ABP, has committed US$250m to Pallinghurst, an investment company specialising in natural resources.

AUSTRALIA - The preliminary results of the Australian government sponsored Cooper review of the country's pension system has suggested superannuation funds should offer a new low-cost product called MySuper.

Giovanni Legorano speaks to Robert Gardner, co-founder and co-chief executive at Redington. Gardner takes us through some of the issues and opportunities pension funds are dealing with in the current market environment: inflation, the evolution of liability...