Iowa Public Employees' Retirement System, Des Moines, hired Harvest Fund Advisors to run $150 million in active publicly traded master limited partnerships, confirmed Judy Akre, director of communications.
It is the $23.3 billion retirement system's first allocation to MLPs.
Funding comes from rebalancing, mostly from the domestic equity portfolio, Ms. Akre said in an e-mail.
An RFP was issued in January. Wilshire Associates assisted with the search.
Separately, the retirement system hired Russell Implementation Services to provide foreign-exchange agency brokerage services for purchases and sales of foreign currency in IPERS' private equity portfolio. Zeno Consulting Group was rehired to provide transaction cost analysis for equity trading, while Global Trading Analytics was hired to provide transaction cost analysis for FX trading.
Also, GAM, which manages $135 million in Pacific basin equities for the system, was put on watch because of “concerns over recent personnel changes within the product,” Ms. Akre said.
