At deadline: April 4, 2011

Boyce I. Greer was named head of institutional investments for Fidelity Asset Management and vice chairman of Pyramis Global Advisors, the institutional investment arm of Fidelity Investments, according to a letter to Pyramis clients from Pyramis Chairman and President Kevin Uebelein obtained by Pensions & Investments.

At BlackRock, Edwin Conway, a former Blackstone Group executive, will head up the firm's $1.1 trillion U.S. & Canada institutional business within the global client group, according to InvestmentNews, a sister publication of Pensions & Investments.

Also, Christopher Li was named president of Lockheed Martin Investment Management, which manages about $46 billion in retirement plan assets of Lockheed Martin Corp. He replaced Jeff Sharpe, who resigned last month to pursue other opportunities. Mr. Li will retain the title of chief investment officer, which he has held since June 2007.

Mr. Greer will head an investment team at Fidelity “comprising Pyramis Chief Investment Officer Young Chin (and Fidelity's) bond group President Chris Sullivan and money market group President Bob Brown,” the March 30 letter said.

The letter said the move was part of efforts by Mr. Uebelein and Ronald O'Hanley, Fidelity Investments' president of asset management, “to further integrate our institutional asset management capabilities across Pyramis and Fidelity, as well as enhance our ability to deliver investment solutions to the institutional marketplace.”

Mr. Greer will retain his current titles and responsibilities as president of both Strategic Advisers and Fidelity's global asset allocation group.

At BlackRock, Mr. Conway will report to Robert Fairbairn, senior managing director and head of BlackRock's global client group.

Mr. Conway replaces Robert Capaldi, who was named in November as senior client strategist for Laurence Fink, BlackRock chairman and CEO.

Mr. Conway was senior managing director in investor relations and business development at Blackstone. A Blackstone spokesman said officials are discussing how to replace Mr. Conway.

CalPERS plans to hire Canyon Capital Realty Advisors to manage its $570 million CalSmart real estate portfolio, said Wayne Davis, a spokesman for the $225.3 billion pension fund.

Officials are working on final arrangements to transfer the CalSmart portfolio to Canyon Capital from RREEF. Mr. Davis said the deal is expected to be finalized shortly.

The CalSmart portfolio, which consists of 11 office, industrial and apartment properties in San Francisco and other parts of California as well as Chicago and Florida, lost more than 60% of its value in the year ended Sept. 30, according to CalPERS investments records. Lemuel Brewster, spokesman for Deutsche Bank, RREEF's parent, said company officials have no comment.

RREEF was hired in December by CalPERS to manage $60 million in European industrial properties. The firm also manages $235 million in other real estate properties for CalPERS.

Two sovereign wealth funds — the $202 billion Kuwait Investment Authority and the $100 billion Government of Singapore Investment Corp. — are buying a combined 5% stake in private equity firm TPG Holdings for several hundred million dollars, according to sources.

The money will remain with the general partnership, according to a source who received a letter from TPG to investors.

It will be used to expand existing business lines and general partnership investments as well as to fund the growth of TPG operations, said the source, reading from the letter.

The North Dakota House of Representatives on March 31 approved a bill to increase the state and employee contribution to the state employees' retirement plan by one percentage point each in 2012 and again in 2013.

Sparb Collins, executive director of the $1.8 billion North Dakota Public Employees Retirement System said the increases will boost the combined state and employee contribution rate to 12.12% from the current 8.12%, stopping “the downward” funded status trend and stabilizing the plan.

The system is about 70% funded, he added.

The state Senate approved the bill on Feb. 24. The proposal goes back to the Senate for approval of any changes from the House version before being sent to Gov. Jack Dalrymple to sign.

Delphi Automotive used cash and a portion of a $3 billion credit facility to buy back stakes in the auto parts makers held by the PBGC and General Motors.

The PBGC received $594 million for its stake while GM's interest was $3.8 billion.

The buyback “fully retires the ownership shares acquired by GM and the PBGC in connection with Delphi's acquisition by a group of private investors in October 2009,” a Delphi statement said.

“PBGC originally obtained its interest in Delphi Automotive in partial settlement of its claims stemming from the 2009 termination of pension plans” of the former Delphi Corp., which had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a statement from the agency said.

The PBGC has taken responsibility for $6.1 billion of the $7 billion in Delphi liabilities, the PBGC statement said.

CalSTRS' funding ratio declined seven percentage points in the year ended June 30, to 71%, according to a report by Milliman, the $150.1 billion system's consulting actuary.

The unfunded liabilities increased by another $15.5 billion during that period, for a 38% increase in the system's unfunded obligations, Milliman said.

The report says CalSTRS would run out of money to pay benefits by around 2040 unless there were increased contributions to the pension system.

The $9.1 billion Louisiana State Employees' Retirement System will conduct a shortlist search for managers to run $100 million in growth equity private equity and $80 million in European distressed private equity, said CIO Bobby Beale. General consultant NEPC will assist.

Mr. Beale said the decision on the searches is a result of the system's annual analysis of the private equity asset class “where we will target areas or strategies that we feel present timely opportunities.”

Mr. Beale said the growth equity search will be the first to be conducted.

BlackRock replaced Genzyme in the Standard & Poor's 500 index after the close of trading April 1.

The change is being made because Sanofi-Aventis is buying Genzyme, S&P said in a statement.

BlackRock was up 7.54% for the week and closed at $202.43 on April 1. BlackRock has a stock market value of $35.8 billion, bigger than 420 of 500 companies in the index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Genzyme was valued at $20 billion.