Chapter 360 Wish them good luck

On February 15, Caesars Fund received another capital injection from several British government-managed pension funds, which invested a total of 1 billion pounds in Caesars Funds.

Among them is the National Occupational Savings Trust (NEST), the largest pension fund in the UK. These pension funds collectively manage more than 20 billion pounds of funds.

Prior to this, the investments of British government pension funds were very conservative, mainly in bank deposits and British government bonds. At most, the Ministry of Finance specially issued a part of non-marketized government bonds NILO for them. Thanks to the British market benchmark interest rate in recent years, it has reached The rate of return of the state pension in the past two years has remained above 3% on average...

After all, in terms of investment, the return is always proportional to the risk. Although the risk of such an investment strategy is very low, the average return of more than 3% is indeed difficult to satisfy.

Some media, including The Independent, have recently compared the relevant data of pension funds in many countries. Among them, including pension funds in some major European and American countries, it can be said that the income of the British government pension funds The rate is listed at the end, not to mention compared with the Norwegian Global Pension Fund (GPFG), a relatively successful pension fund with a relatively high rate of return, compared with government pension funds in countries such as the United States and France, the British Government Pension Fund The fund's return rate is far inferior.

It is also for this reason that the British media criticized the "inaction" of the government pension fund. They would rather put the funds in the government account at such a low rate of return than use part of it to invest and support some domestic companies. development of……

Take the Norwegian Global Pension Fund, for example. Although half of their funds are invested in extremely low-risk government bonds and bank bonds, like the British Government Pension Fund, they still invest a huge proportion in stocks, Real estate and other assets have achieved satisfactory rates of return, with their comprehensive rate of return more than twice that of the British Government Pension Fund!

Therefore, amid such criticism, the British government's financial department also decided to make certain changes. It will allocate part of the funds from some of the pension funds managed by the government to invest in some relatively stable but higher-yield companies. among products.

This time, several government pension funds have spent a total of about 3 billion pounds in funds and selected three fund products with relatively high yields for investment, including Caesars Fund, which has a closing period of 5 It is a fixed income fund product with an average annual return of 12%.

The other two are fixed-income financial products developed for these pension funds by Barclays Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland.

In fact, during his previous meeting with Finance Minister Brown, Barron had already reached a tacit understanding with the other party...

In the end, Brown agreed to provide a certain degree of financial support to the Caesar Fund, but accordingly, these funds will mainly be used to invest in domestic companies to enhance the competitiveness of British companies.

As for Barclays Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland, Brown will naturally reach consensus with each other on certain aspects - of course, these so-called "consensus" still generally seek the interests of local British companies, but it does not involve them. Brown himself - there will certainly not be a direct transfer of benefits, but it will also be useful for Brown to obtain the support of these capitals at some point.

After all, if Caesar Fund is the only one to benefit from this policy of liberalizing the investment of government pension funds, then other financial institutions will definitely be dissatisfied. But now that three powerful institutions have benefited, it seems much more upright.

"It is said that the funds received by Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the reasons is that the fixed income they give to the government pension fund is slightly higher than ours..."

Daisy also got some of the news and said to Barron:

"The Royal Bank of Scotland has previously invested part of its funds in the famous Madoff Fund in the United States. Therefore, they have established a good cooperative relationship with the other party and are able to invest funds into this high-profit fund with extremely high thresholds. As we all know, , the return rate of this investment fund is extremely high, which has a lot to do with Madoff's position in the U.S. securities industry. In the years 1982-1992, when this fund performed best, its return on investment was able to reach 13.5% - 20%, even now, is often between 10% and 15%. Therefore, if the Royal Bank of Scotland invests this part of the funds obtained in the Madoff Fund, it can eat up the funds without doing anything. With a profit difference of one or two percentage points, the average annual rate of return they can give is still slightly higher than ours..."

"sounds good……"

Barron didn't have much reaction to Daisy's words. After all, it was impossible for him not to know what the so-called "Madoff Fund" was. He could only say, wish them good luck.

However, Barron was not prepared to talk much in this regard, but said to Daisy as if nothing had happened:

"We need to hurry up and build bullish futures positions on international crude oil prices again."

"We have already started to build positions before this. Since the beginning of January, the international crude oil price has returned to below 40 US dollars again. During this period, we have been carefully controlling the pace of building positions to avoid causing too much fluctuation in oil prices. It is expected that In another week, we will be able to complete our position and keep our average position price below $42.”

Seeing Barron stretching, Daisy hesitated for a moment, then just like Wang Wanting did before, she got up and walked behind him, put her hands on Barron's shoulders, and massaged him. said:

“This time we specifically used the U.S. dollar and used WTI New York crude oil futures as the main battlefield to build positions and check the international oil prices...”

DS Investment Company, managed by Daisy, has established a fund specifically to invest in crude oil futures this time. Caesar Fund invested US$1 billion to conduct operations based on international oil prices - also because this operation is relatively A long-term one, unlike before, would last for three or four years, so we deliberately used this form to operate.

The reason why U.S. dollars are used for operations is that in the future, the British pound will face a long-term exchange rate decline against the U.S. dollar. Using U.S. dollars, in a few years, in addition to making profits on crude oil futures, the exchange rate of foreign exchange will also increase. On the other hand, you can also make a lot of extra money.

This is why a large proportion of the loans and liabilities of DS Capital and other subsidiaries are currently settled in pounds sterling.

And this kind of liability is reflected in pounds. For Barron's, another advantage is that before the end of last year, the exchange rate of pounds against the US dollar continued to rise.

The property directly under Barron's name carries liabilities in pounds sterling. Compared to calculating his net worth in dollars, the appreciation of pounds sterling has increased his liabilities a lot when expressed in dollars, and has also offset part of the appreciation of his assets. , in various rich rankings that will be announced soon, Barron's asset valuation, which can be queried through public information, will be significantly underestimated, which is exactly what Barron wants.