ASIA - Asian institutional investors outside of Japan are looking to boost returns by investing more heavily in liquid alternatives, high yield debt and emerging markets while Japanese investors are looking for non-domestic opportunities, a new survey...

GLOBAL - PIMCO has hired five new investment staffers in London, New York and Singapore to round out its emerging markets equities team, with two joining from Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM).

GLOBAL - The Netherlands, Australia and Switzerland have the world's best pension systems in terms of adequacy, sustainability and integrity, but all 16 countries surveyed in the 2011 Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index are under stress from economic...

AUSTRALIA - The A$24bn Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation has hired Northern Trust as custodian, marking the firm's first full-service master custody client in Australia.

KPMG snags Mercer partner, Mercer poaches from NEST, BlackRock, BlueBay, ICI, Impax, Man Group, Aviva, Barings

KPMG has hired Jon Exley, former partner at rival Mercer's financial strategy group, to serve as partner within the investment advisory practice.

Don't forget to have your say on which providers deserve to land on the shortlist for the Global Pensions Awards 2012!

CANADA - The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) has launched a new venture capital arm that will play "a unique role in the industry" by providing funding to North American companies throughout their investment lifecycle.

Investors need to raise their knowledge of the transition management process if they expect to have successful transitions, delegates heard.

GLOBAL - A handful of sophisticated pension funds are expanding their securities lending programmes to include lending emerging markets securities, which rake in higher fees than their developed market counterparts, an eSecLending official said.