GSF looks to international property

The Government Superannuation Fund is about to invest in the international property market.

Thursday, September 23rd 2004, 11:06PM

by Rob Hosking

Last year the GSF announced it would put 7.5% of its funds into “alternative asset classes”. The GSF is currently negotiating with preferred managers- two listed international property funds and one unlisted. An announcement is likely in three to four weeks.

The GSF yesterday released its annual report for the year to June, which showed an after tax return of $316.8 million – or 10.16% return on assets.

“To put that in context though, 2002 was a poor year, and last year was below average. We’ve got to take a very long term view – this fund has to be here for another 60 years – so we’re not going to go out and crow about it,” chief executive Alan Langford said.

Several months ago there was a suggestion that the government might move to fully fund the GSF, along similar lines to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. At present the government provides an annual “top up” of the GSF, depending on how well or poorly it has performed that year.

Langford hasn’t heard anything about that officially and says it would cost the government somewhere between $10-11 billion to make such a move.

In the lead up to this year’s Budget the Treasury, in a paper on the government’s long term debt objectives, suggested the government could move to slowly fully fund the GSF. However the idea does not appear to have gone much further than that.

The fund holds assets worth $3.36 billion, and has more than 71,000 members.

Rob Hosking is a Wellington-based freelance writer specialising in political, economic and IT related issues.

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