The Royal Ordnance Pension Scheme, the retirement fund for the UK’s ordnance factories – makers of guns, bullets and bombs – is the latest to part company with troubled US asset manager AllianceBernstein, it emerged last week.

AllianceBernstein was one of the £840m (€932m) scheme's seven investment managers, running a global equities portfolio which had underperformed its benchmark, according to a report last week from the scheme's governing trustee board to its membership.