Dai Xianglong
Dai Xianglong, a former governor of the People s Bank of China and former head of the National Social Security Fund, is calling for allocating a proportion of assets confiscated from corrupt officials and a proportion of land transfer fees to replenish pension reserves.
At a pension reserves forum hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on December 19, Dai said the amount of assets confiscated from corrupt officials could total billions of yuan.
In recent years, with the increasing number of elderly in China, the sustainability of the pension fund is under threat. In 2019, the balance of social insurance funds nationwide was Rmb585.486 billion, and after fiscal subsidies were excluded, there was a deficit for the seventh consecutive year.
The Japanese pension giant has already started passively investing with the two US index providers.
The Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) in Japan has started investing $12.5 billion into two foreign environmental, social, and governance (ESG) benchmarks from US index providers Morningstar and MSCI.
The Japanese pension allocated roughly $9.7 billion to a general ESG-themed index from MSCI, as well as $2.9 billion to a gender diversity-themed index from Morningstar, the fund said Friday. Respectively, the two benchmarks are called the “MSCI ACWI ESG Universal Index” and “Diversity Morningstar Gender Diversity Index (GenDi).”
“We consider these two indexes to be firmly in line with our objective of improving long-term returns through enhanced sustainability of individual issuers and the market as a whole,” GPIF President Masataka Miyazono said in a statement. (Miyazono just started in April after se
By Rachel Fixsen2020-12-21T12:45:00+00:00
Green bond issuance around the world will hit €300bn next year, with the amount of the environmentally-linked debt coming onto the market rising by 50% from this year, Dutch firm NN Investment Partners (NN IP) has predicted.
The firm said several developments coming up next year would support the market for green bonds, including the publication of the final version of the EU’s Green Bond Standard; the bloc’s planned green bond issuance debut from Q2 onwards and first-time issuance from several national governments.
The EU’s upcoming green bond issuance is estimated to be around €225bn, NN IP said, which is equivalent to a third of its COVID-19 recovery package.
Japan’s GPIF Selects Two ESG-Themed Foreign Equity Indexes
Posted on 12/18/2020
Japan Government Pension Investment Fund selected two additional ESG-themed benchmarks based on information submitted through its Index Posting System, which the fund uses to collect information on a variety of new indexes.
After closely evaluating the qualities of each general ESG-and diversity-themed foreign equity index and conducting thorough due diligence on respective providers, GPIF selected and began passive management based on the following two benchmarks:
Theme – Index Name
2. Diversity – Morningstar Gender Diversity Index (“GenDi”)
GPIF have allocated and begun passively investing a combined total of ¥1.3 trillion (approximately US$ 12.5 billion) in assets against these two benchmarks.