Japan’s Noritz Pension Fund combines active management with a large allocation to cash. CIO Kyoshi Iwashina opines on his frustrations with the asset management community, his concerns about ESG and the dangers inherent in comparisons between corporate pension funds.
Demographics is destiny, or so the saying goes. As populations grow, and as they move about, there will be investment opportunities that arise from their needs, their activity and their consumption. The trick for investors, however, is working out how long-term trends figure in generating shorter-term investment performance.
The $102 billion Danish pension fund, ATP, returned just 3 per cent in its return-seeking allocation in the first half of this year, buoyed by its foreign and Danish equity portfolios but pulled down by rising interest rates negatively impacting the large allocation to bonds.
As growing geopolitical tension and government control has caused some investors to exit China, Norway’s $78 billion pension fund KLP has stepped up engagement with Chinese mining companies at risk of breaching labour rights and responsible extraction.
Sweden’s largest pension fund, the $126 billion Alecta, has spent much of the last year continuing to work on improving governance, risk management, competence and culture in the wake of a $2 billion loss in 2023 attributable to investments in US regional banks, including Silicon Valley Bank, turning sour.
The UK’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves just returned from a trip to Toronto where was gleaning ideas from Maple 8 bosses on how to emulate a “Canadian style” pension model. But it will require a governance overhaul to create a Maple 8 in the UK.
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