San Francisco City & County Employees' Retirement System will search for its first global equity manager following approval of changes in allocations within its public equity and fixed-income asset classes, confirmed Robert Shaw, interim deputy director of investments.
The $15.9 billion pension fund hasn't set a date to release of the RFP, Mr. Shaw said.
The pension fund has about a 47% target allocation and 50% actual allocation to public equity. Within that portfolio, the global target will be changed to 5% from zero; emerging markets to 11% from 9%; core international to 14% from 19%; domestic large-cap value to 9% from 8%; and domestic enhanced to 5% from 8%.
The pension plan has a 26.7% actual and 25% target allocation to fixed income. The target changes within that portfolio are: Barclays Capital Aggregate index fund to 6% from zero; emerging markets debt to 9% from 7%; adding bank loans to the high-yield subasset class and increasing high yield to 8% from 6%; internal fixed income to 6% from 13%; and core-plus to 59% from 62%.
Allocations to opportunistic investments for both equity and bonds were increased up to 10% from up to 5%.
The new allocations will be met mainly through rebalancing, Mr. Shaw said in a telephone interview.
Investment consultant Angeles Investment Advisors assisted in the review.
Separately, the San Francisco pension fund will search for an emerging markets debt manager to run about $110 million. The manager will replace Ashmore Investment Management's local currency short-duration portfolio. The board approved liquidating Ashmore's portfolio earlier in the meeting and pursuing a strategy that includes longer duration assets as well as corporate emerging markets debt. Ashmore will be invited to bid on the new search.
The pension fund will also issue an RFP for a consultant to assist the system in searching for a global custodian. Northern Trust's contract expires June 30, 2013.
Both RFPs will be available on SFERS' procurement website at www.sfers.org/index.aspx?page=67 and will be released by early next week.
Proposals for the consultant search will be due 5 p.m. PDT Nov. 2; the due date for the emerging markets debt manager and the hiring dates for both searches haven't been decided.
Also, the board approved committing $40 million to TriGate Property Partners II, an opportunistic real estate fund managed by TriGate Capital, and $30 million to Apax VIII, a large buyout fund with an international focus managed by Apax Partners.
It is the pension fund's first commitment to TriGate and ninth to Apax.
