Reuters: US Dollar Report: Japan GPIF to select new managers for domestic equities

Reuters: US Dollar Report Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Japan GPIF to select new managers for domestic equities Apr 26th 2013, 08:13 TOKYO, April 26 | Fri Apr 26, 2013 4:13am EDT TOKYO, April 26 (Reuters) - Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund, the world's largest public pension fund, issued a tender on Friday to select new fund managers to supervise its domestic equities portion of its massive $1.12 trillion overall portfolio. The public pension fund, known as GPIF, is under pressure to raise investment returns to cope with pension payouts for Japan's rapidly ageing population. GPIF occasionally replaces new managers to supervise its assets by reviewing performance and services including fees. GPIF will select both active and passive managers of Japanese stocks holdings, which totalled 14.5 trillion yen ($145.74 billion) or 13 percent of overall portfolio as of December, and Topix will be used as a benchmark. The tender will close on June 14. Companies such as Nomura Asset Management and JP Morgan Asset Management are among 19 managers who are actively managing GPIF's domestic equities. They were selected in 2008. There are seven passive investment fund managers, including BlackRock, but they have not been changed since the birth of GPIF in 2001, an official of the public fund said. Separately, the public fund was still in the progress of selecting new asset managers for its holdings in foreign equities. The tender was announced in June. GPIF is currently reviewing its long-term investment target and portfolio allocation model. It held its first investment committee meeting to review its investment strategy on April 12. GPIF is conducting the review after a report by Japan's Board of Audit, requested by the upper house of the national assembly, called last year for the GPIF to consider reviewing its target and allocations. Global market participants are closely watching the outcome of the review to see whether the public fund will change its allocation strategy after developments in the market since late last year. The Nikkei share index has surged about 60 percent and the yen has dropped 24 percent against the dollar since mid-November, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced his plans to fight deflation through aggressive monetary easing and reflationary policies. GPIF is heavily exposed to domestic bonds as it allocates its investments based on its model core portfolio with a 67 percent allocation to yen bonds, 11 percent to domestic stocks, 9 percent to foreign stocks and 8 percent to foreign bonds. Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions