Ohio Public Employees' Retirement System, Columbus, made two direct hedge fund investments totaling $280 million, confirmed spokesman Michael Pramik.
The $76.4 billion pension fund committed $180 million to Bridgewater Pure Alpha Major Markets, a discretionary global macro fund, and $100 million to Visium Balanced Fund, an equity long/short fund.
The commitments bring the pension fund's total direct hedge fund investments to $2.7 billion.
Hedge fund consultant Cliffwater assisted.
Separately, the pension fund reset its real estate benchmark to the NCREIF Fund Index-Open End Diversified Core Equity plus 75 basis points from the NCREIF Property index. The change was because the open-end diversified index is “'investible', it's a fund-level index, it takes into account leverage, it covers a wider variety of property types, it captures quarterly mark-to-market valuations on debt and equity, and it's available on a net-of-fees basis,” according to meeting notes provided by Mr. Pramik.
The pension fund also changed its private equity benchmark to a rolling, three-year measure from a one-year measure to “reflect the longer period it takes for private equity investments to mature,” according to meeting notes.
