GPIF to hire alternatives investment managers

The Government Pension Investment Fund of Japan (GPIF), the world’s biggest manager of retirement savings, is looking to hire in-house investment managers for alternatives.

According to a job posting published on the fund’s website yesterday, GPIF is hiring separate professionals to lead investments in each of the three classes, namely infrastructure, real estate and private equity.

For the post of real estate operations personnel (translated from Japanese), GPIF has called for applicants with more than three years’ experience in domestic and overseas real estate fund management or in a real estate asset management business.

Similarly, the requirements for the private equity investment manager and infrastructure investment manager role include three years of operational experience as an investor or an investment manager of a private equity or an infrastructure fund.

The deadline for applications has been listed as September 4, 2015.

The news of GPIF expanding its in-house portfolio management team comes amid widespread speculation about the next steps in the $1.1 trillion pension fund's portfolio overhaul, which was officially announced in November last year.

Hiring investment managers for specific asset classes would lay the groundwork for the fund’s stated goals of investing 5 percent of its portfolio in alternatives.

In an interview with Pensions&Investments in June, Hiromichi Mizuno, GPIF’s executive managing director and chief investment officer, called the 5 percent allocation figure for alternatives “an opportunity, not an obligation,” further adding that “as soon as GPIF builds a team and sees compelling opportunities, we hope to be a significant player in private markets”.

GPIF’s rebalanced investment framework is part of the fund’s overall plans of diversifying its bond-heavy portfolio towards greater exposure to domestic and international equities. There has been no separate category created within alternatives sectors; infrastructure, real estate and private equity investments are to be clubbed under domestic and international bonds and equities.

Mizuno, who was previously a partner at the London-based private equity secondary market investor Coller Capital, was hired by GPIF as its first head of investment in late November last year.