Nippon Life Insurance Co., the nation's biggest life insurer, may post a 10 percent return on hedge-fund investments this year as it shifts to strategies better suited to a market recovery.
The insurer, with ¥44 trillion in assets and about ¥100 billion in hedge funds in the fiscal year that ended March 31, may increase investments in so-called long-short and global macro funds, said Hideya Sadanaga, deputy general manager of the company's Credit & Alternative Investment Department. A 10 percent gain in the calendar year would nearly reverse an investment loss of about 15 percent last fiscal year.
"We're yet to be convinced that what we're seeing is a fully fledged economic recovery globally, so strategies with enough liquidity would be the ones we would be shifting our cash positions to," Sadanaga said in an interview in Tokyo Thursday. "This isn't the time to turn completely aggressive."