(January 11, 2013) — The largest pension fund in the United Kingdom has appointed a trustee director with a career in investment banking to its board.
Catherine Claydon, who has more than 15 years’ experience at Goldman Sachs, has joined the pension fund, according to documents filed at the UK corporate register Companies House. A spokesman for the fund confirmed the appointment to aiCIO.
Claydon was a managing director of the bank’s pension advisory team, before leaving to join Lehman Brothers’ in a similar role in at the start of 2007.
After the collapse of the bank, she launched Claydon Advisers and has since taken several directorships at UK pension funds and listed companies. Claydon has been a member of the Unilever pension fund investment committee for almost three years and has been an independent trustee director at the Barclays pension fund since May 2011. She earned an MBA from Wharton Business School in Pennsylvania.
The £38 billion BT pension fund, the largest in the UK, has eight trustee directors. It already has one independent trustee from Law Debenture – David Felder – who joined in September 2011. Claydon replaces David Barford who died last year.
BT has been one of the most prominent funds in the push towards investing in real assets. Last year it joined other large UK pensions that had committed to fund long-term infrastructure projects. The fund was nominated for recognition at aiCIO‘s Innovation Awards in December last year.
In November, BT reported its pension fund liabilities had increased to £42 billion, despite cash injections of £2 billion in the third quarter of the year. A £500 million rise in asset values could not offset an increase in liabilities, the company’s financial statements said.