Japan Post Bank Co seen as the next whale big enough to move markets

Tokyo

AS the world's biggest pension fund nears the end of its switch from sovereign bonds into stocks, investors are looking at Japan Post Bank Co as the next actor big enough to move markets.

The postal lender, the biggest holder of Japanese government bonds (JGBs) after the central bank, sold 5.1 trillion yen (S$60.3 billion) in JGBs in the three months ended June, after offloading a record amount of the debt last fiscal year. The US$1.2 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), known as the whale, said last week that stock and fixed-income holdings were all within three percentage points of their targets, suggesting that it has almost completed a planned shift into riskier assets including global bonds and shares.