NZ Super Fund loses $230 mln in August

NZ Super Fund loses $230 mln in August

By Paul McBeth

Sept. (BusinessDesk) – The New Zealand Superannuation Fund, more commonly known as the Cullen Fund, made a paper-loss of $230 million last month.

Movements in the fund’s asset allocations were fairly muted in what was a flat month for stocks, and most of the loss came from a bigger drain in its cash, collateral and foreign exchange hedges. The fund made a loss of $431.5 million from the programme, bigger than July’s $159.2 million loss. It has some $16.21 billion under management.

The value of the fund’s global equities fell $53.1 million to $10.31 billion, and increased as a percentage of total assets to 63.6% from 63.1% in July.

The Cullen Fund, which was set up by previous Finance Minister Michael Cullen in a bid to offset the looming pension bill of an ageing population, ramped up its exposure to international stocks this financial year in response to the global financial crisis, and more details will be released next month when its Statement of Intent for 2010 to 2015 is made public.

The fund has grown 3.32% in the year to date, and 5.85% since inception. The fund aims to return a 2.5 percentage points over the return on Treasury bills and is currently 2.57 percentage points short of this target.

Its biggest local holding is still Auckland International Airport Ltd. shares, which make up 1.6% of the fund’s value, followed by Fletcher Building Ltd at 0.8% and Telecom Corp. and Contact Energy Ltd. at 0.6% each.

Australian toll road company Transurban Group is the biggest international stock in the fund at 1.6%, followed by Swiss airport operator Flughafen Zuerich AG and ConnectEast Group, which owns and operates Melbourne’s EastLink motorway, each making up 1.1% of the fund’s assets.

(BusinessDesk)

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