Agenda and minutes

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Contact: Sean O'Neill  01225 395090

Items
No. Item

1.

EMERGENCY EVACUATION PROCEDURE

The Chair will draw attention to the emergency evacuation procedure as set out under Note 9.

 

Minutes:

The Democratic Services Officer read out the procedure.

2.

DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

At this point in the meeting declarations of interest are received from Members in any of the agenda items under consideration at the meeting. Members are asked to complete the green interest forms circulated to groups in their pre-meetings (which will be announced at the Council Meeting) to indicate:

(a) The agenda item number in which they have an interest to declare.

(b) The nature of their interest.

(c) Whether their interest is a disclosable pecuniary interest or an other interest,  (as defined in Part 2, A and B of the Code of Conduct and Rules for Registration of Interests)

Any Member who needs to clarify any matters relating to the declaration of interests is recommended to seek advice from the Council’s Monitoring Officer or a member of his staff before the meeting to expedite dealing with the item during the meeting.

Minutes:

There were none.

3.

APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE AND SUBSTITUTIONS

To receive any declarations from Members of the Committee and Officers of personal/prejudicial interests in respect of matters for consideration at this meeting, together with their statements on the nature of any such interest declared.

 

Minutes:

There were none.

4.

TO ANNOUNCE ANY URGENT BUSINESS AGREED BY THE CHAIR

Minutes:

There was none.

5.

ITEMS FROM THE PUBLIC - TO RECEIVE DEPUTATIONS, STATEMENTS, PETITIONS OR QUESTIONS

Minutes:

There were none.

6.

ITEMS FROM COUNCILLORS AND CO-OPTED AND ADDED MEMBERS

To deal with any petitions or questions from Councillors and, where appropriate, co-opted and added members.

 

Minutes:

There were none.

7.

MINUTES: 24TH FEBRUARY 2016 pdf icon PDF 69 KB

Minutes:

A Member raised a query about the third bullet point in the third paragraph of page 9:

 

“there was no manager so bad that Members would want to disinvest from them in the next three to six months”

 

It was agreed that this was true only on the basis of the information available to the Panel at that time, and was not a restriction on the ability of the Panel to disinvest from any manager if it appeared appropriate to do so at a future date.

 

The Minutes were approved as a correct record and signed by the Chair.

8.

LIABILITY RISK MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK pdf icon PDF 58 KB

Before discussing Exempt Appendix 1, Members are invited to pass the following resolution

 

 

The Committee, having been satisfied that the public interest would be better served by not disclosing relevant information, RESOLVES, in accordance with the provisions of Section 100 (A) (4) of the Local Government Act 1972, that the public shall be excluded from the meeting while Exempt Appendix 1 to this item is discussed, because of the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Act as amended.

 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Assistant Investments Manager introduced this item.

 

He said this was the next step in the process of developing a liability risk framework, which the Panel had already considered at two previous meetings. The representatives from Mercer would comment in detail on the proposal. The key issues were the target levels for hedging and the trigger levels and their implementation. The Panel would be invited to recommend to the Committee that it approve the proposed framework and delegate its implementation to officers in consultation with the Panel.

 

RESOLVED that, the Committee, having been satisfied that the public interest would be better served by not disclosing relevant information, the public shall be excluded from the meeting while Exempt Appendix 1 to this item is discussed, in accordance with the provisions of Section 100 (A) (4) of the Local Government Act 1972 because of the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Act as amended.

 

Mr Turner and Mr Giles commented on the proposal set out in Appendix 1.

 

After discussion, the Panel RESOLVED to recommend to the Committee

 

1.  The liability risk management framework summarised on pages 24 and 25 of Exempt Appendix 1.

 

2.  that the implementation of the framework be delegated to officers in consultation with the Panel.

9.

REVIEW OF INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE pdf icon PDF 65 KB

Before discussing Exempt Appendix 3, Members are invited to pass the following resolution

 

 

The Committee, having been satisfied that the public interest would be better served by not disclosing relevant information, RESOLVES, in accordance with the provisions of Section 100 (A) (4) of the Local Government Act 1972, that the public shall be excluded from the meeting while Exempt Appendix 3 to this item is discussed, because of the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Act as amended.

 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

[Shirley Marsh left the meeting.]

 

The Assistant Investments Manager introduced this item.

 

He asked Members to note two changes to the reports. In Appendix 1 an extra column had been added for currency hedging to make it more transparent and in Exempt Appendix 3 three years of performance data had been added to facilitate the monitoring of changes over time.

 

He said that it had been quite a challenging quarter for managers in terms of absolute returns and relative performance. Schroders global equity and Standard Life are underperforming their three-year targets. IFM had drawn down $195m of the Fund’s $300m commitment. All active managers were underweight in oil and gas. This will be picked up in the next SRI review.

 

A Member said that she had asked Unigestion a question at their last meeting with the Panel about their investments in oil and gas. At a conference last week they said that they had reviewed their framework and were disinvesting from two stocks to reduce their carbon risk, and that the review had been prompted by her question. The Assistant Investments Manager said that managers value feedback on how they are addressing issues – another example being the questions the Fund raised with managers recently about the funding of terrorism.

 

Mr Turner commented on the Mercer performance report.

 

RESOLVED

 

  1. That there were no issues to be notified to the Committee.

 

  1. To note the information as set out in the reports.

 

10.

WORKPLAN pdf icon PDF 70 KB

Minutes:

The Investment Manager presented the report.

 

RESOLVED to note the workplan to be included in the Committee papers.