With R1.85-trillion under management, the Public Investment Corporation is the single largest pool of long-term savings in SA’s economy and wields formidable power. Any fund manager that large will have to do more than just invest in the usual index of stocks and bonds if it wants to outperform the index and deliver above-average returns to its beneficiaries, who in this case are the millions of public servants in the Government Employees Pension Fund as well as the millions of members of funds such as the Unemployment Insurance Fund, whose assets the PIC manages. Most retirement funds would put at least a part of their assets in alternative investments such as private equity or infrastructure funding. In that sense, the PIC’s Isibaya Fund, which invests in private equity and in other unlisted assets, is a good idea in principle. It is good too given that the PIC has something of a developmental mandate that requires it to invest at least a portion of the funds it manages in assets ...
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