Japan’s Pension Fund Association for Local Government Officials, or Chikyoren, is searching for a custodian bank for its investments in alternatives.
A Dec. 11 announcement, in Japanese, on the pension fund’s website, said proposals are due by 5 p.m. Japan Standard Time on Dec. 21.
A spokesman for the ¥21.1 trillion ($174 billion) Tokyo-based pension fund said in an e-mail this will be the first time Chikyoren has hired a custodian for alternative assets.
He declined to say whether the pension fund has made any investments in alternatives yet.
Asked whether the pension fund had set any targets for alternatives allocations, the spokesman pointed to the common asset allocation targets adopted by Japan’s top public pension funds, led by the ¥135 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund, Tokyo, which sets a 5% ceiling for alternatives — not as a separate allocation but as part of a pension fund’s allocations to equities and bonds, both domestic and offshore.
That 5% target would amount to $8.7 billion of the pension fund’s $174 billion in assets as of the March 31, the end of its most recent fiscal year.
