Fund Appoints Goldman Sachs Asset Management

New Zealand Superannuation Fund Appoints Goldman Sachs Asset Management

Auckland (11 May 2006) - The New Zealand Superannuation Fund today announced the appointment of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) to a multi-strategy mandate.

Under the mandate GSAM will employ a number of different active management strategies incorporating equities, fixed income, currency markets, commodities, relative value between those markets, and volatility, to generate alpha. The alpha generated by this strategy will be overlaid on a market exposure for which the benchmark is the Citigroup World Government Bond Index.

Commenting on the appointment, the Fund's CEO Paul Costello said: "This appointment continues our strategy of focussing on efficient delivery of returns from active risk independent of a particular benchmark. We continue to look for opportunities to broaden and deepen our active management programme."

This mandate will be managed by the Quantitative Strategies Group within GSAM. It is the second mandate awarded to GSAM since the Fund began investing in September 2003. In June 2004 they were appointed to manage a US small-cap value mandate.

The appointment of GSAM brings the total number of external investment mandates to 33. The value of the Fund at 31 March 2006 was NZ$9.5 billion.

ENDS

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