* The fund may raise CAD exposure, trim USD holdings
* Likely to keep Australian dollar exposure high
* Yasuda Asset's Pan-Pacific bond fund has Y55.9 bln assets
* Japanese mutual fund invests in debt in USD, CAD, AUD, NZD
By Masayuki Kitano and Yuka Obayashi
TOKYO, March 25 (Reuters) - Yasuda Asset Management said it may boost its Canadian dollar weighting and could reduce its exposure to the dollar as interest rates in Canada could be raised sooner than in the United States.
The Japanese fund also wants to keep its exposure to the Australian dollar high, as a recovery in the global economy this year will underpin demand for commodities and the Australian economy, its chief investment officer Osamu Koizumi told Reuters in an interview.
"We would like to keep our weighting in Australia high and may increase our weighting in Canada," he said.
Koizumi oversees Yasuda Asset's mutual funds with total assets of nearly 290 billion yen ($3.2 billion), including its Pan-Pacific foreign bond fund that had 55.9 billion yen in assets as of March 19.
With the Bank of Japan unlikely to raise interest rates, now at 0.1 percent, until late in 2011 at the earliest, the yen is likely to fall this year, he said.
The Australian dollar could rise above 90 yen and the Canadian dollar may climb to around 100 yen this year, he added.
That would amount to a gain of more than 7 percent for the Australian dollar against the yen compared to current levels near 84 yen, and a roughly 11 percent rise for the Canadian dollar, now hovering near 90 yen.
Yasuda Asset's Pan-Pacific bond fund invests in debt such as government and municipal bonds in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well as debt issued by supranationals.
Australian dollar-denominated bonds accounted for 39.9 percent of its portfolio, followed by 25.4 percent in the Canadian dollar, 22.0 percent in the dollar and 10.4 percent in the New Zealand dollar and 2.3 percent in cash and other assets.
Koizumi said the fund may increase its allocation to the Canadian dollar to around 30 percent of its portfolio by the end of the year.
The fund may trim its allocation to the Australian dollar a little, but the Aussie is likely to remain the currency with the highest allocation, he said.
The biggest potential risk factor for the Pan-Pacific bond fund is China's monetary policy, Koizumi said. The fund may face headwinds if China were to conduct major monetary tightening, which might cause its economic growth to slow significantly, he said.
The rate of return on Yasuda Asset's Pan-Pacific bond fund was 21.9 percent in the five years to the end of 2009, according to data from Lipper, a Thomson Reuters company. That exceeded the average return of 8 percent among 60 bond mutual funds sold in Japan in the same category.
The fund won a Lipper fund award on Thursday for best five-year performance by a Japan-marketed fund in global bonds. It was also named best fund for its three-year performance of minus 2.5 percent, better than the average return of minus 8.7 percent among 82 funds in the same group.
INTEREST RATE OUTLOOK
Australia's central bank has already raised interest rates by 100 basis points to 4 percent since October, putting it far ahead of every other big central bank, and the market is pricing in further hikes of around 125 basis points in the next 12 months, and with the next move seen likely in May.
Although the Bank of Canada has promised to keep interest rates at an all-time low of 0.25 percent until the end of June provided inflation stays tame, Koizumi said he thinks the central bank may start raising interest rates a bit sooner.
"I think they may start around June, that they will have raised interest rates by then," Koizumi said.
By contrast, Koizumi said he thought it was unclear whether New Zealand's central bank would raise interest rates from a record-low 2.5 percent towards the middle of 2010.
His view is at odds with prevailing market expectations, which are for New Zealand's central bank to start raising interest rates in June.
Yasuda Asset Management also expects the Federal Reserve to start raising interest rates, now around zero, toward the end of this year. But Koizumi said the timing could be later if the U.S. unemployment rate is not in a clear declining trend toward the year-end. (Editing by Edwina Gibbs)