Fund Appoints GMO to Second Multi-Strategy Mandate

New Zealand Superannuation Fund Appoints GMO to Second Multi-Strategy Mandate

Auckland (15 June 2006) - The New Zealand Superannuation Fund today announced that Grantham, Mayo, van Otterloo & Co (GMO) has been awarded a global multi-strategy mandate.

This is the second global multi-strategy mandate awarded by the Fund following the appointment of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) last month.

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

Headquartered in Boston, GMO is a privately-held investment management firm with around US$100 billion under management. It is the fourth mandate awarded to GMO since the Fund began investing in September 2003. In June 2004 they were appointed to manage a small cap EAFE equities mandate, followed by a large cap global growth equities mandate in February 2005, and a New Zealand timber mandate in October 2005.

The appointment of GMO brings the total number of external investment mandates to 34. The value of the Fund at 30 April 2006 was $9.9 billion.

ENDS

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