jamescurdell
Netherlands
Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund plans to boost investment in growth stocks to increase returns and may eventually allocate several trillion yen to such equities, the Nikkei newspaper said.
The state-run ¥121 trillion ($1.24 trillion) fund, the world’s biggest manager of retirement savings, will initially invest several billion yen in a new domestic index focused on returns on equity, governance and trading volume, Nikkei said Saturday without citing anyone.
Japan Exchange Group Inc. will this year announce criteria and about 500 stocks for the new index, which will be based on fundamentals, CEO Atsushi Saito said in Tokyo on July 30. That will be a departure from benchmarks like the Topix index, which includes all stocks listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s first section, or the Nikkei 225 Stock Average.
Calls made Saturday to GPIF and the exchange were unanswered.
“It’s going to be like a membership of the country club and many companies will want to join a special club,” Curtis Freeze, the Tokyo-based chief investment officer at Prospect Co., which manages about $330 million in Japanese equities for overseas investors, said by phone Saturday. “It’s going to be a quality index, not just a quantity index, and that’s very important.”
GPIF is meanwhile hiring staff for its investment management and research units. The fund is looking for people aged 28 or younger to start in January, according to its website. It’s also advertising jobs in the planning, information systems, general business and accounting divisions, according to the statement.
The panel advising Japan’s leaders on public pensions said in a report last month that more “front-line” experts are required to diversify investments and adopt more sophisticated risk-management measures. The economists are reviewing GPIF’s asset allocations in a bid to boost returns.