Private equity firms are responsible investors for local authority pension funds, according to a leading fund manager. A vigorous response to attacks on private equity investment came from West Midlands Pension Fund's senior investment manager, Carolyn White, at last week's annual conference of the Local Authorities Pension Fund Forum in Bournemouth. West Midlands fund is managed by Wolverhampton MBC and has invested in private equity since 1981. It is committed to investing £650m from 2007-2009 in order to earn superior returns and reduce risk by diversifying the fund's investments. Ms White said private equity firms had provided all the information required more easily than quoted companies had, and were subject to detailed due diligence by the fund. She stressed that, as a responsible investor, the fund's experienced in-house team worked hard to assess performance and governance. Governance reform was the conference's other key concern, as Mike Taylor, chief executive of the London Pension Fund Authority, urged funds to go beyond simple compliance checking and to work with companies on governance reform. He said companies seemed to be either good at socially-responsible investment or good at compliance, but rarely good at both.