Singapore’s GIC reports lowest returns since global financial crisis | Financial Times

Singapore’s GIC reports lowest returns since global financial crisis | Financial Times:

GIC has posted its lowest rate of return since the global financial crisis as the Singapore sovereign wealth fund braces for deeper geopolitical and market uncertainties due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Coming into this year we already had concerns about high valuation, indebtedness, policy room and geopolitics,” said Lim Chow Kiat, chief executive of GIC. “Covid just made every one of them worse and more uncertain.”

The state fund's annualised 20-year real rate of return, its main performance metric, was 2.7 per cent for the year through March. That was down from 3.4 per cent in the previous 12 months, and the lowest since hitting 2.6 per cent in the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.

GIC said the drop was largely due to gains from the “tech-bubble” financial year of 1999-2000 dropping out of the 20-year metric.