About

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund is a global investment fund established by the New Zealand Government to partly pre-fund the future cost of New Zealand superannuation payments. The Fund is managed by a Crown entity, the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, and is currently around $35bn NZD in size. ‘To develop these actions we have strategic objectives that we have agreed on to focus on. These are re-visited annually. In addition the team has set individual objectives to help in achieving our goals’ says Cristina Billett, the Fund’s head of legal. With a scope work that is ‘broad, international and complex’, Billett explains the way her team has utilised several tools to complete the risk assessment and implement the required actions to deal with this scope, including the innovative use of ‘technology and communication methods such as the development of a legal intranet page, intranet-based workflow management tools, a regular legal and regulatory dashboard reporting tool and instigating a legal clinic as a means of making legal advice more accessible to the wider team’. The structure of the Fund requires ‘agility and scalability’ according to Billett, who explains that the legal department’s capabilities through both its legal advice and business counsel has ‘allowed the Fund to participate in investment opportunities that require an understanding of and ability to execute on complex, time-bound and varied opportunities in an environment where non-investment risk mitigation is a critical aspect’. Naming several transactions in which the team has proven its value on and that span several legal practice areas, Billett highlights the work done on matters including the acquisition of interest in NZ Bank, Kiwibank and Group of Companies and associated documentation and capital facility arrangements, along with the secondary sale of interests in three offshore private equity funds to different purchasers.