James Hacking, administrator of the $6.1 billion Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System, Phoenix, will step down on Aug. 31, 2010, he said in an interview.
He will leave the plan at the end of his five-year contract with the system, he said. A search for his replacement will begin in January.
Mr. Hacking, 64, said he has no immediate plans to retire but will move to St. Paul, Minn., where his wife, Laurie Hacking, serves as executive director of the $13.8 billion Minnesota Teachers Retirement Association.
Mr. Hacking joined the system in August 2005, when large-cap equities made up about 70% of the portfolio. Much of that was invested in telecommunications and technology securities, which plunged in value a few years earlier during the tech bubble.
“They had virtually no small-cap U.S. stock exposure, virtually no international equity exposure, no emerging market exposure, and fixed income was plain-vanilla corporate bonds; no high yield, nothing exotic,” Mr. Hacking said. “The rest of it was cash and a small allocation to real estate and private equity.”
Over the last five years, the system diversified its investments, with an asset allocation, as of June 30, of 35.7% U.S. equities, 20.3% fixed income, 19.2% non-U.S. equities, 8.9% real estate, 7.6% credit opportunities, 4.2% real assets, 2.7% private equity and 1.4% short-term investments.
“What I set out to do here is really done,” he said. “Things are much improved here.”
Prior to joining the Arizona system, Mr. Hacking served as executive director for a number of other plans, including the Illinois State Universities Retirement System from 1996 to 2005, the Minneapolis Employees Retirement Fund from 1990 to 1996, and the Minnesota Public Employees Retirement Association from 1985 to 1990.
