The NT$700 billion ($21 billion) Taiwanese Labor Pension Fund is tendering for Asia ex-Japan and global equities mandates, with a combined asset value of $1.2 billion, for its new and old pension funds in what is the first overseas discretionary search for this year.
South Korea’s sovereign wealth fund (SWF), the $25 billion Korea Investment Corporation (KIC), has signed cooperation agreements with Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) and Malaysia’s Khazanah Nasional Berhad to share resources and pursue investments with the government-owned entities.
France’s pension reserve fund, the €28.9 billion ($40.6 billion) Fonds De Reserve Pour Les Retraites, has completed a strategic asset allocation review that began last January, resulting in a dramatic reduction in equities.
In the US, defined contribution plans have grown in importance but are relatively new to economic and regulatory uncertainty. In an environment such as this, Watson Wyatt suggests specific practices for managing fiduciary liability and optimising plan value for participants, with the possible result of revising the plan’s investment structure.
In line with its recently-approved leverage policy, the $181 billion fund for Californian public employees, CalPERS, has reviewed its derivatives policy for global equities, with notional leverage constrained to a new limit of 10 per cent of the value of the global equities portfolio.
Getting past past performance
In his top1000funds.com blog on outlying investment issues, Jack Gray Adjunct Professor of Finance at the Paul Woolley Centre for Capital Markets Dysfunctionality at the University of Technology, Sydney, contemplates the allure of past performance.