The average Irish Pension Managed Fund gained 3.9% in the first quarter of the year, according to the latest figures published by Mercer Investment Consulting. This brings the 12 month return to the end of March to 22.9%.
Mercer said that AIB Investment Managers' new Multimanager Managed Fund topped its survey for the first quarter with a return of 5.5%. KBCAM was the worst performer in the three month period with a return of 2.7%.
Irish Life (26.9%) and Acorn Life (24.8%) were the best performing funds over the year to the end of March, outperforming the average return of 22.9%. The biggest underperformers were AIBIM's Managed Fund (20.1%) and Irish Life Global Access (21.4%).
'It is good to see that the positive upswing, which initially began this time last year, has continued into 2004,' commented Grainne Alexander, Senior Investment Consultant with Mercer.
'There has however been quite a range of returns delivered in terms of how various markets have performed year to date. For example, the Eurobloc region has returned just under 2% to investors while Japanese equities have give a return in excess of 18%,' she pointed out.
She said that equities have outperformed bonds in the year to date with the world equity index added 6% while bonds were up 3.7%. Cash returns were up just 0.5%.
Over the past five years, the average managed fund has returned 0.7% a year, with Montgomery Oppenheim (5.1% per annum) and Bank of Ireland (3.5% per annum) the best performing. AIBIM, with a return of -1.9% per annum was the underperformer during this time.
