Pension funds on road to recovery, says the OECD
IN the first half of 2009, pension funds tracked by the OECD recovered $1.5 trillion (£918bn) of the $5.4 trillion they lost in market value last year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said yesterday.
“The recovery in pension fund performance has continued through 30 September 2009, on the back of strong equity returns, but it will be some time before the 2008 losses are fully recouped,” the Paris-based agency said.
Pension funds staged a partial recovery in the first half, generating investment returns of 3.5 per cent in nominal terms, said the OECD, whose 30 members are mostly rich industrialised economies.
Best performing funds in the OECD area were, on average, in Norway and Turkey, with nominal returns of more than 10 per cent, compared with nominal returns of four per cent for funds in the United States, the report said.
Total pension funds assets still remained 14 per cent below their December 2007 levels as of June 30, 2009, the OECD said in its Pensions Markets in Focus report.