Bonds

DENMARK/PORTUGAL - Denmark's second-biggest pension fund said it may snap up Portuguese bonds if they keep falling after the country became the third euro member to seek a bailout since Greece's fiscal woes triggered the sovereign debt crisis.

ECUADOR - Ecuador's public pension fund, the nation's biggest institutional investor, will limit purchases of government debt to about 30% of the $1bn set aside this year as rising oil prices trim the country's budget gap.

EUROPE - European leaders have agreed on a revised bailout package, creating a permanent fund to resolve the debt crisis in the eurozone.

Henry Boot shaved £10m to £12m off its pension liabilities last year through an enhanced transfer value exercise and switching to RPI indexation, results show.

GLOBAL - Axa, Europe's second-biggest insurer, said its funds investing in catastrophe bonds and other insurance-linked securities may more than triple their assets in the next five years, helped by demand from pension managers.

US - Illinois, which plans to sell $3.7bn of pension bonds next week, may seek a federal guarantee on retirement-system debts if its unfunded liabilities can't be eliminated, according to budget documents.

UK institutional pension funds' equity allocation has plummeted by a fifth in the past decade - but remains the highest in the world, according to a global study.

Schemes will continue to cut exposure to equities and fixed income and shift investments towards property and alternatives in the next six months, bfinance says.

EUROPE - European leaders are winning over investors as they try to keep the single-currency bloc intact, raising the appeal of the region's so-called rescue bonds, said Timo Loeyttyniemi, the head of Finland's state pension fund.

IRELAND - An early election in Ireland will not derail the launch of sovereign annuity bonds, the Irish Association of Pension Funds (IAPF) believes.