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In the week ending 05 August, 2016, hedge funds and alternative investment managers continued making inroads into Asia's institutional investor community with the South Korean government announcing it will gradually raise the overseas and alternative investment proportion in seven state-run pension funds. Likewise, Korea Post will buy more U.S. assets as the state-run fund joins a global hunt for returns amid record-low interest rates. South Korea’s alternative investments had exceeded $233bn last year, and short selling is resurging in South Korea despite rules on disclosure. Hedge funds in Korea are attracting wealthy investors – leading to a surging market, while in Japan the Japan Post Bank said it would extend its hedge fund-of-funds allocations to three managers.

In the US, things look different with the New Jersey Investment Council saying it would cut its $9.1bn hedge funds investment by half. It was also reported that BlackRock’s fund-of-hedge funds unit will get $1bn from New Jersey pension as part of an effort to tap lower fees from asset managers. The Ohio School Employees Retirement System, Columbus, made a direct hedge fund investment of $50m; ING’s pension fund is planning to ramp up its inflation-risk hedge to protect the pensions of its 71,500 participants. U.S. college endowments are poised to take the worst slide in performance since the 2009 recession; the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board returned 2.3% in the fiscal year ended June 30; the Rhode Island state pension fund lost $466m over the past fiscal year, and Goldman Sachs’ retirement plan is liquidating a $350m hedge fund run by Och-Ziff Capital. AIG has reduced bets on event-driven and long-short strategies as it also scaled back hedge fund investments; and Dutch pension SPH will reduce its managers as it switches to passiv......................

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