Published by Asia Asset Management – 10th Apr 2018
Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) has named Russell Investments Japan Co Ltd (Russell Investments Japan) as a transition manager for its foreign bond investments, the pension fund says in a statement on April 4.
The company will join BlackRock Japan Co Ltd (BlackRock Japan) to undertake transition management for GPIF’s foreign bond mandate, which stood at about 23 trillion yen (US$214.8 billion) as of December 2017.
A transition manager is mainly responsible for managing changes to a pension fund’s asset portfolio, such as minimising unnecessary costs and mitigating risk.
According to a GPIF spokeswoman, transition managers can help to make the pension fund’s asset rebalancing and transfer processes more effective.
“With the utilisation of transition managers, GPIF can reduce costs and risk exposure,” she tells Asia Asset Management.
Russell Investments Japan, the Japanese unit of US-based asset manager Russell Investments, is also a transition manager for other GPIF assets.
Last November, the company was hired as a transition manager for GPIF’s domestic equities, joining BlackRock Japan and Nomura Asset Management.
Russell Investments Japan and BlackRock Japan are also the transition managers for GPIF’s foreign equities mandate.
The pension fund does not plan to look for additional transition managers at the moment, the spokeswoman says.
GPIF, the world’s largest pension fund, had approximately 162.67 trillion yen in total assets under management at the end of 2017.
