Japan’s Pension Fund Trips On Active Mgmt

Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) is the world’s biggest state investor, trumping all other managed government retirement and sovereign wealth funds. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s drive to spur the Japanese economy out of its two-decade-and-growing economic slump, known as Abenomics, has pushed the GPIF to plow more money into risky investments, aiming both to stimulate the economy and finance pensions in the world’s most rapidly aging society.

Increased Domestic Investment
For instance, as part of a plan to boost equities to half its assets and shift more money away from Japanese bonds, Bloomberg reported that in the last three months of 2014, the GPIF raised its domestic stock holdings for a fifth-straight quarter, “adding a net 1.73 trillion yen, the most since 2009,” and “almost doubled net sales of Japanese government bonds to 5.56 trillion yen ($46 billion),” at that time “the most in Bank of Japan figures dating back to 1998.”

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