Takahiro Mitani finds himself between George Soros and a hard place.
Mitani is Japan's $1.26 trillion man. The Government Pension Investment Fund that he runs tops Mexico's annual output and dwarfs the Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds that investors are always cooing about. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants the notoriously conservative fund to crank up returns by putting more money in stocks -- with an unlikely assist from billionaire Soros.
In January, the world's most famous short seller chatted with Abe at Davos, urging him to nudge the pension colossus into the 21st century. News of that tete-a-tete is helping Abe to push changes in the fund's management structure and to encourage it to diversify. At the moment, about 60 percent of the fund's holdings are wasting away in the lowest-yielding domestic debt -- Japan's -- anywhere. Getting the fund to move large chunks of that money into stocks could provide a timely boost to Abe's reflation efforts.
It could also be dangerous. When Abe talks about upping stock holdings, I fear what he really means is Japanese stocks. There's great disappointment that last year's Nikkei rally fizzled. When shares roared higher, Abe could plausibly argue that investors were heeding his call to "buy my Abenomics." Now, investors are disappointed that none of the structural reforms pledged 18 months ago have been implemented.
You'd think the prime minister would respond with urgent action to bolster confidence and enliven growth: Next week my government will do X, the week after that Y, and next month Z. Instead, he's focusing on boosting asset prices. The first blow was struck when the Bank of Japan doubled bond purchases in April 2013. The second, it seems, will entail massive share purchases by the government pension fund, which raises more than a few moral-hazard questions.
via http://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-international/george-soros-takes-on-japans-126-trillion-man
