Key Unilever documents 'missing'

KEY documents relating to Mercury Asset Management's administration of the Unilever pension fund went missing, the High Court has been told.

John Richards, a team leader at MAM, said he was highly confident he had seen the portfolio risk profiles of the Unilever fund generated within Mercury in 1996 and 1997. However, Unilever counsel Jonathan Sumption QC said that the only copy Unilever had obtained of the document was printed eight months after Richards left Mercury in 1997.

Sumption said the print was made one day after Unilever first claimed compensation from MAM for the poor performance of the pension fund. He asked Richards what it was about his procedures that could cause the documents to disappear. Richards said: 'I don't know. I can't explain it, except clearly they were not filed.'

The case continues.