Martin Mannion is to leave GlaxoSmithKline to join the £2.7bn John Lewis Partnership Pension Trust, portfolio institutional has learned.
It is understood Mannion, who is director of finance and risk for the £8.6bn GlaxoSmithKline UK pension schemes and secretary to the trustee for the GSK common investment fund, will replace former John Lewis head of investments, Andrew Chapman, who retired last year.
Mannion, who has been with GSK since 2002, is also chairman of the National Association of Pension Funds Investment Committee – on which Chapman also sits – and chairs the transition management industry’s T-Charter code of good practice.
Although confirming the move, both parties declined to comment further on the appointment. Mannion is expected to join the department store later this year, however.
The John Lewis Partnership Pension Trust is one of the few companies left in the UK that still offers a non-contributory, final salary pension scheme to employers after three years’ service.
The partnership is currently conducting an extensive two-year review into its pension provision after revealing its final salary scheme deficit rose by almost 29% in 2012.
It admitted that funding the scheme was the largest single annual investment it made and that it had made a one-off £125m cash contribution into it in January.
In all the deficit grew by 28.8% (£184.0m) to £822.1m due to the 19.6% (£621m) increase in liabilities to £3.796bn, outstripping the growth in assets of 17.2% (£437m) to £2,973.9m.
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