The New Zealand Superannuation Fund today announced the appointments of Numeric Investors LLC and Bridgewater Associates.

Numeric Investors LLC (Numeric) has been appointed to manage an equity-only multi-strategy mandate, benchmarked against the MSCI World Index. 

Under the mandate Numeric has discretion to employ two or more of its equity strategies. Those strategies cover a number of countries and include long-short investing, a strategy that involves combining a long position in one company and a short position in another. Using a combination of these strategies overlaid with futures and swap positions, Numeric will maintain a market exposure closely in line with the benchmark MSCI World Index.

This is the second mandate awarded to Numeric since the Fund began investing in September 2003. In May 2004 they were appointed to manage a US small-cap growth mandate. This is the first mandate where the Fund has given a manager discretion to invest across an approved range of the manager's investment strategies.

Bridgewater Associates (Bridgewater) has been appointed to manage a Global Tactical Asset Allocation (GTAA) mandate, benchmarked against the Citigroup World Government Bond Index.

Under the mandate Bridgewater invests in its Pure Alpha Fund which makes relative value trades, both long and short, between equities, bonds, commodities and currencies on a global basis. Bridgewater then overlays the benchmark exposure using a combination of physical and derivative positions.

Commenting on the appointments, the Fund's CEO Paul Costello said: "These two new appointments are significant for a number of reasons: they are the first in which alpha, or excess return over and above the benchmark, is the primary driver of the mandate with the chosen benchmark being more a matter of convenience; and, they both allow the manager to make short positions in stocks or markets that the manager believes will under-perform the long positions."

The appointments of Numeric and Bridgewater bring the total number of external investment mandates to 28. The value of the Fund at 31 December 2005 was NZ$8.4 billion.

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For more information please contact:

Paul Costello, CEO, New Zealand Superannuation Fund, + 64 9 300 6980
Edward R. Goldfarb, Managing Director, Numeric Investors, + 1 617 374 3430
Lionel Kaliff, Director International Marketing, Bridgewater Associates, + 1 203 226 3030

Notes to Editors:

Numeric Investors Numeric Investors was founded by Langdon B. Wheeler in 1989 to discover and profit from inefficiencies in stock markets around the world. Numeric uses a family of internally developed, quantitative stock-selection techniques to capture excess returns in the United States, Japanese and European stock markets.  Numeric offers market-neutral long / short and long-only investment strategies. At the beginning of 2006, Numeric employed sixty-two people and managed $10.8 billion in client assets; $3.6 billion in market neutral and $7.2 billion in long-only strategy assets. Numeric's clients are major pension plans, supranational agencies, foundations, high net-worth individuals, and mutual fund investors (through the n/i numeric investors Family of Funds). www.numeric.com

Bridgewater Associates Formed in 1975, Bridgewater Associates has been researching and trading the global markets for over 30 years. The firm manages approximately $133 billion in assets with $33 billion in Pure Alpha Strategies which include GTAA, Alpha Overlay and Absolute Return applications. In addition, Bridgewater manages $57 billion in currency overlay, $38 billion in global fixed income, $12 billion in global inflation-indexed bonds, $2 billion in emerging market debt and $5 billion in the All Weather Portfolio. Bridgewater is solely focused on institutional clients including: pension funds, university endowments, charitable foundations, supranational agencies, governmental agencies and central banks. www.bwater.com