New Mexico Educational Retirement Board, Santa Fe, will be issuing either an RFP or RFI for an infrastructure consultant, said Bob Jacksha, chief investment officer of the $9.2 billion board, in an e-mail.
Incumbent Courtland Partners will be invited to bid.
Timing of the search and a schedule for selection have yet to be determined, but it might start as early as next month.
Mr. Jacksha said the board voted to conduct the search because the asset class was relatively new when the board hired Courtland in June 2007 and board members would like to see whether there are any new infrastructure consultants that started in the last few years.
At its Feb. 11 meeting, the board also allocated $150 million each to GSO and Medley Capital for direct lending portfolios, the fund's first investments in the subasset class. Funding will come from managers running the fund's roughly $1.8 billion in core fixed income.
“As we shift more assets to ‘opportunistic credit' (which includes this allocation to the direct lending space), we will likely terminate one or more of our three existing managers as core bonds will be reduced to 5%,” Mr. Jacksha added.
Those managers are Neuberger Berman, which manages $605 million; Pyramis Global Advisors, which manages $717 million; and Western Asset Management, which runs about $440 million, according the board's recent performance report.
Separately, the board extended the contract of its hedge fund consultant, NEPC, for two years. (NEPC is also the fund's general investment consultant.) It also extended for two years the contract of Pyramis, which manages a $315 million active international equity portfolio.
At the meeting it was announced the fund earned 13.8% for the year ended Dec. 31, outperforming its policy index by 200 basis points. Top-performing asset classes were real estate investment trusts with 28.8%; domestic small/midcap equities at 26.1%; global tactical asset allocation, 25.3%; and private equity, 20.3%.
