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Korea's NPS made 10% return in 2009

  • Maya Ando
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South Korea’s $241 billion National Pension Service (NPS), the nation’s biggest LP, boosted its returns last year, posting a 10% return on assets in 2009, according to South Korea’s welfare ministry, following an 0.2% loss in the year before.

“Our profit from shares bought for a good bargain during the crisis was the main factor,” the ministry said publicly. Concurrently, the NPS has also been making large-scale private equity real estate and infrastructure investments into assets such as London's Gatwick Airport.

Previously, the NPS's domestic share activity was restricted to investments in companies already listed on either the main Korea Exchange board or the tech-heavy KOSDAQ market. However, regulators are now ready to allow the SWF to make pre-IPO investments of up to 5% of its funds in companies about to go public. As for its 2010 investment plan, the NPS aims to invest 67.8% of its funds in domestic bonds, 16.6% in domestic companies, 5.1% in overseas bonds, 4.1% in overseas companies and 6.4% in alternative investments such as real estate and private equity. The NPS is the fifth largest SWF in the world, and one of the best-performing as of 2009.

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