Pension fund investors in Italy remain conservative, with only around 20% of total assets invested in equities. Focusing on the new closed-end pension funds, according to data from Covip, the industry’s supervisory board, at the end of 2001 75% of total assets were invested in fixed income vehicles. Italian bonds attracted around 45% of total pension fund assets and Euro-land bonds accounted for 22%, with the total exposure to domestic fixed income vehicles representing around 67% of the total portfolio. Foreign bonds amounted to around 8% of total assets, most of them invested in non-Euro-zone European countries.
On the equity side, only 3.8% of total assets were invested in Italian stocks, and 7.7% in other countries in Euro-land. US equities attracted around 5% of total pension fund assets, with around 2% invested in European counties outside the Euro-zone. The total exposure to foreign equities represented around 8% of total assets.
The graph shows only the portfolio split of the new occupational closed-end funds.