Irish pension funds lost an estimated €27 billion over the past 12 months. Figures from Rubicon Investment Consultants says the average managed fund declined by 34.8% in the year as the global economy moved towards recession.
Rubicon says that Setanta Asset Management was the best performing manager in 2008, with a return of -29.6%. Hibernian Investment Managers had the worse performance of the year with a negative return of 38.8%.
One of the main reasons for the heavy losses was the fact that Irish pension funds were 'substantially over-exposed' to an underperforming Irish stock market, as Irish shares tumbled by 65% over the year.
Rubicon also said that exacerbating the already difficult situation is the fact that defined benefit pension schemes will have seen their liabilities increase by between 5-10% over the year, due to falling bond yields.
The company said that although the Government has recently relaxed some of the rules under which pension schemes operate, in order to ease the pressure on pension schemes and members, it does not believe the temporary measures go far enough.
Rubicon also said that Irish pension managed funds fell by 3.1% in average in December, with Setanta Asset Management the best performing manager with a return of -1.5%.
Over the past three years, the average fund return has been 'extremely disappointing', Rubicon says, with a return of -10.5% The five year returns to the end of December are also negative, with the average managed fund delivering a return of 0.8%.
