After taking over the helm of the world’s biggest pension fund in 2015, Hiromichi Mizuno helped chart a course that not only made sustainable investing big in Japan, but also raised the strategy’s global profile.
The Government Pension Investment Fund’s former chief investment officer sidestepped public bemusement and criticism at home, as he sought to turn GPIF into a fund that — as one Harvard Business Review article put it — tried to "change the world” through its approach to environmental, social and governance investing.
But at a time when the pandemic has accelerated the global push toward ESG themes, the ¥178 trillion fund seems to be mostly treading water.