Japanese pension funds holding $400 billion hire their first CIOs
Japanese pension funds are seeking to bolster returns in a volatile market by doing something many of them have never done before: appoint chief investment officers.
One of those funds, the Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation Japan, an agency that promotes smaller firms, established a position that's equivalent to a CIO in April.
It gave the job to Takashi Yamashita, who previously helped design the portfolio of Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), one of the world's biggest retirement fund managers. He'll oversee ¥12 trillion ($83 billion) in assets tied to a fund to aid small businesses, at the firm known as SME Support Japan.
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