The fund has recently undergone a major rebalancing of its assets following an ALM study earlier this year. Susanne Haury von Siebenthal, director of asset management at Publica, said that, after the study, the fund decided to widen its investment universe.

She said: “There will be a few new asset classes coming in. First, we decided to hedge all foreign currency risk where we could and where there’s a market for it, because we’re not quite sure where there is a risk premium in currency risk. We would rather go to markets where we are sure that systematic risks are compensated.

“Then we have commodities. That’s a new class for us. And then we will have finer segregation of the fixed income assets.”

In February, the fund increased its

exposure to equities to 22 per cent from 18 per cent. This came at the expense of bonds, which saw a drop from 72 per cent to 68 per cent. The remaining 10 per cent of its assets are in direct Swiss real estate.

Much of this has to do with the fund’s gradual progression from a defined benefit to a defined contribution (DC) system. While the adjustments are ongoing, Publica will officially be a DC scheme on July 1 2008.

Ms Haury von Siebenthal said: “We transfer all active members. It doesn’t change anything for the retired stakeholders,

but the new ones will all be changed. So what we do is we calculate the assets for each and every one of our stakeholders and then they will be transferred to the new scheme.”

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