New Zealand Super catching flight

Flughafen Zuerich - Zurich airport. Photo / Wikimedia Commons posted by user Atlanticpuffin

Just like most retail investors the New Zealand government, thanks to Bill English's decision to suspend payments to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund (NZS) last year, has missed out on the big upswing in markets.

As I noted in an earlier blog April 2009 was quite possibly the worst time, in an investment sense, to suspend payments to the NZS.

Since July 2009 NZS has since returned 17.44 per cent, which would've looked pretty good on the government's books today if English had slung in the extra $2 billion or so as in previous years.

Despite this NZS is now looking almost healthy again - just about on track to meet its long-term goal of beating New Zealand Treasury bill returns by 2.5 per cent. It has a while to catch up. The official time-period for NZS is meet this target is over 'rolling 20-year periods' and it is not yet a decade old.

And looking through the latest release you can see the NZS managers are thinking about the long-haul - or the haul anyway.

The list of NZS' four substantial holdings - meaning ownership of 5 per cent or more of a company - appears very transport-centric.

As well as owning almost 10 per cent of Auckland airport, NZS also has a 6 per cent share in Mainfreight and over 8 per cent of the ConnectEast Group, which owns a Melbourne toll road.

As well, our super fund has a 5.05 per cent stake in Flughafen Zuerich - also known as Zurich Airport, which was voted European Airport of the Year for the sixth consecutive time.

It's quite comforting to think that each time those Swiss investment bankers fly off to an important meeting they will also be contributing to my retirement fund.

David Chaplin