Ohio Public Employees' Retirement System, Columbus, hired Wellington Management and Acadia Asset Management to run $125 million each in active international small-cap equities for the $53 billion system, according to a press release from the system. Funding for the Wellington portfolio came from reducing an international equity index fund run by Barclays Global Investors. Partial funding for the Acadian portfolio - $100 million - will come from the BGI international equity index fund; that fund now has $2.9 billion in assets, according to a system spokesman. The balance of the funding will come from assets previously managed by Nicholas-Applegate. In May, OPERS terminated Nicholas-Applegate, which ran $300 million in active large-cap and $21 million in active small-cap international growth funds. The balance of those funds was transferred to the system's other international equity managers, the spokesman said.
According to the release, OPERS will keep Capital Guardian Trust, which manages $160 million in active domestic small-cap equities, on watch through February 2004 to continue monitoring the firm's performance against its benchmark. CapGuardian was put on watch in April because of underperformance of its U.S. small-cap portfolio, according to the press release. Jennifer Grigas, Capital Guardian spokeswoman, said the firm had no comment.
