Korea’s Pension Fund to Buy More Overseas Stocks, Cut Bonds

South Korea’s National Pension Service, the nation’s biggest investor, plans to allocate more funds to overseas equities as it seeks to boost returns.

The agency, which had 406 trillion won ($360 billion) in assets as of March, will raise the weighting of overseas stocks to 10.5 percent of its assets in 2014, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, which oversees the NPS, said in a statement today. That compares with the 2013 target of 9.3 percent. The fund is keeping its target for domestic equities unchanged at 20 percent and aims to pare domestic bond holdings to 54.2 percent of assets next year from 56.1 percent targeted for 2013.