Japanese Pension Funds With $3.4 Trillion In Assets Seek Safety in Gold

Tuesday, December 18, 2012
By Paul Martin

Gold Core
GoldSeek.com
Tuesday, 18 December 2012

Diversification into gold is taking place in order to protect against sovereign risk, debasement of currency risk and inflation risk.

In March 2012, Okayama Metal & Machinery became the first Japanese pension fund to make public purchases of gold, in a sign of dwindling faith in paper currencies. Okayama manages pension funds for about 260 small and mid-sized companies in the Okayama area.

“By diversifying currencies, we aim to reduce risks associated with them,” said Yoshi Kiguchi, the fund’s chief investment officer. “Yields become stable if you put small amounts into as many types of holdings as possible.”

Of its 40 billion yen ($477 million) in assets, the fund has invested around ¥500 million-¥600 million in gold, he said.

Initially, the fund aims to keep about 1.5% of its total assets of Y40bn ($500m) in bullion-backed exchange traded funds, according to chief investment officer Yoshisuke Kiguchi, who said he was diversifying into gold to “escape sovereign risk”.

Other pension funds in Japan are following their lead according to the Wall Street Journal.

Japanese pension funds are diversifying into gold “largely to mitigate the damage from possible market shocks”.

The Rest…HERE

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