Oklahoma Teachers' Retirement System, Oklahoma City, hired Cove Street Capital, Frontier Capital Management Co. and Neumeier Poma Investment Counsel to run small-cap value equity strategies, and Wasatch Advisors and Geneva Capital Management to run small-cap growth equity allocations, confirmed James Wilbanks, executive director.
The $11.4 billion pension fund has a 10% allocation to small-cap equity. Shapiro Capital Management's core strategy was reduced to 40% of the small-cap portfolio from about 50% as part of the new structure. Wasatch and Geneva each received about $170 million; Frontier, about $142 million; and Cove Street and Neumeier Poma, about $100 million each.
Funding comes from the Shapiro reduction and the June termination of Tocqueville Asset Management, which managed about $400 million in small-cap value equity.
Separately, the pension plan terminated a $292 million fixed-income portfolio managed by Stephens Capital Management for performance. Bill Tedford, Stephens executive vice president and director of fixed-income strategy, said pension fund executives wanted to move away from Stephens' intermediate government bond fund into more of a Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond index strategy, which the firm does not offer.
Mr. Wilbanks said there are no immediate plans on where to transfer the Stephens assets. Investment consultant gregory.w.group will start an asset allocation study at the April board meeting that is expected to be completed within the next two months.
Also, Loomis Sayles was taken off alert for its $203 million high-yield debt strategy. Loomis Sayles was placed on alert in October for personnel changes.
