Aon Hewitt has hired the CIO of the £4.4 billion ($6.7 billion) John Lewis Partnership Pensions Trust to its fiduciary management arm.
Adrian Mitchell, who has led investments for the retail giant’s pension fund since 2012, will be a senior portfolio manager when he joins Aon at the end of February, the consultant confirmed to CIO.
John Lewis’ pension is one of the few large defined benefit funds still open to new members in the UK, although the company is currently consulting on changes to the arrangement as it grapples with a deficit of more than £1 billion.
Aon Hewitt is attempting to build out its outsourced investment capabilities to compete with rivals Towers Watson and Mercer, which both have strong presences in this area in the UK.
Meanwhile, Swiss asset manager Unigestion has hired Rudyard Ekindi, former director of investment research at the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST), as head of investment solutions.
Ekindi was part of the team responsible for designing NEST’s investment portfolio between 2009 and 2013, as it prepared to accept UK workers under the new auto-enrolment regime. He has also held asset allocation and research roles at Credit Suisse Asset Management.
Related Content: The Many Tensions of Outsourcing