Restrictions eased on Super managers

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund has awarded new investment mandates to two specialist US investment managers.

The fund said yesterday that it had appointed Numeric Investors to manage a specialised global equity mandate and Bridgewater Associates to manage a global equities, bonds, commodities and currencies mandate.

Fund chief executive Paul Costello said the new mandates meant the two highly skilled managers were effectively being given more freedom as to how and where they allocated funds.

Numeric Investors, which already manages a US small cap growth mandate for the fund, is to manage $450 million in an equity-only multi-strategy mandate, benchmarked against the MSCI World Index.

Bridgewater will invest $165 million using a number of investment strategies employing extensive use of derivatives.

During December, the fund, which was established in 2003 to meet part of the pension bill of the baby-boomer generation, returned 2.68 per cent on investments and grew by about $400 million to reach $8.41 billion.