Laerernes, Hellerup, Denmark, hired Russell Investments to run 850 million Danish kroner ($145 million) tracking the Russell Fundamental Emerging Markets Large Company index, confirmed Morten Roed Eriksen, portfolio manager at the 52.7 billion Danish kroner teachers pension fund.
“We were looking to implement a value tilt in our emerging market equity exposure and think the Russell Fundamental index will be an efficient way of doing this,” Mr. Eriksen said in an e-mail.
A public search process began in March 2011.
Funding comes from reducing a passive developed markets equity mandate run by Nordea, which tracked the MSCI World GDP Weighted index. Nordea continues to run about 8 billion kroner for the fund.
The Russell Fundamental Index Series is based on Research Affiliates' methodology that selects and weights stocks according to economic measures of company size, as opposed to market capitalization.