Vijoy Chattergy was named chief investment officer of the $11.7 billion Hawaii Employees' Retirement System, Honolulu, he confirmed in a telephone interview.
Mr. Chattergy has been serving as interim CIO since Rod June left in July to become CIO of the Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System. Mr. Chattergy previously was an investment specialist for the pension fund.
Mr. Chattergy said he will have the authority to hire two investment specialists — one each for public and private markets — and expects to have people in place early next year. The private markets investment specialist is a new position; the pension plan will increase its private equity allocation to 7% from 3.5% over the next five years.
“We feel we've been understaffed in terms of investment resources for a long time,” Mr. Chattergy said.
Separately, the pension fund reported it returned 4.7% for the first quarter of the fiscal year, ended Sept. 30. International equity was the top asset class for the quarter, returning 7.6%, followed by domestic equity, 6.2%; fixed income, 3.3%; covered calls, 3%; real return, 1%; real estate, 0.4%; and private equity, -0.1%. Private equity and real estate returns lag by three months.
