Media Release

71/2009
29 October 2009

Release of the Future Fund’s Annual Report 2008-09

Lindsay Tanner, Minister for Finance and Deregulation tabled the 2008-09 Future Fund Annual Report in Parliament today.  The report outlines the Future Fund’s performance over the past financial year, the second year of the Fund’s investment program.

At 30 June 2009 the Future Fund’s total assets were $61.04 billion. During the 2008-09 financial year there was un-precented turmoil in the global financial markets.  In this context, the Future Funds negative return of 4.2% (excluding Telstra holdings) represents a good result for the fund. In the first quarter of the 2009-10 year, the Future Fund (ex Telstra) generated a return of 5.6%. This means the losses of the 2008-09 year had been completely reversed by 30 September 2009. 

Over the year the Fund’s Board of Guardians responded to the challenging global economic environment and positioned the Fund for the projected recovery.

During 2008-09, depth and breadth was added to the portfolio by placing significant capital in the hands of specialist managers across private equity and debt strategies whose specific aim was to ensure that the opportunities created by the global financial crisis were harnessed. By the end of the year $4 billion had been committed to these strategies, with $1.6 billion of this invested by 30 June.

During the year the Board accepted responsibility for investing the assets of three new Nation Building Funds – the Building Australia Fund, Education Investment Fund and the Health and Hospitals Fund. By the end of the year the balances of these funds were $9.95 billion, $6.49 billion and $4.83 billion respectively.

Lindsay Tanner, Minister for Finance and Deregulation, welcomed the report and said that the performance of the Fund over 2008-09 indicated that the Board had performed well in managing the funds in a time of financial instability, achieving a good result for Australian tax payers given the challenging economic times over the past year.

The report is available at: http://www.futurefund.gov.au/

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