St. Louis Employees' Retirement System hired Principal Global Investors to run about $48 million in an open-end core diversified real estate portfolio, a new asset class for the $482 million pension plan, said Dan Holmes, managing director of consultant Summit Strategies. Funding will come from rebalancing domestic equities and reducing all of the plan's fixed-income portfolios, Mr. Holmes said. The change follows an asset-liability study completed last year. The plan's new asset allocation is 45% domestic equity; 25% fixed income, down from 35%; 20% international equity; and 10% real estate.
Separately, trustees put active domestic large-cap equity managers Wellington and RCM Capital on watch because of performance and personnel matters, Mr. Holmes said. Wellington runs a $62 million value portfolio and RCM runs $56 million in growth. The board will re-evaluate both firms in October, he said. Neither Lisa Finkel, Wellington spokeswoman, nor Jennifer Callahan, RCM spokeswoman, would comment.
Goldman Sachs agreed to pay $2 million to settle SEC charges that it violated federal securities laws in connection with four IPOs in 1999 and 2000 in which Goldman was the underwriter, according to an administrative order from the SEC. According to the order, filed today, sales traders on Goldman's Asian sales desk tried to sell shares in the four IPOs before the SEC declared their registration statements effective. The four IPOs were PetroChina Co. Ltd., China Telecom Hong Kong Ltd., Chinadotcom Corp. and Gigamedia Ltd. Goldman neither admitted nor denied the allegations, and a spokesman was not available for comment.
