Alaska Permanent Fund Corp.’s $500 million hedge fund incubator program went live with the hire of its first hedge fund portfolio manager.
The board of the $45.3 billion Juneau-based sovereign wealth fund last year decided to split off $500 million of a $1.1 billion hedge fund mandate managed by Mariner Investment Group into a separate account that would provide new portfolio managers with their first cash. According to April 23, 2012, meeting minutes, between six and 12 hedge fund portfolio managers will become Mariner employees to manage allocations between $50 million and $100 million each.
Alaska spokeswoman Laura Achee confirmed that Mariner is managing the incubator strategy.
The first hedge fund strategy in the permanent fund’s portfolio is the Alarium Mariner Global Macro Fund, which combines fundamental research with systematic and quantitative strategies. Eric Pellicciaro joined Mariner on April 1 to manage the strategy.
Mr. Pellicciaro was managing director and head of global rates investment at BlackRock. Robert “Bob” Miller, managing director and portfolio manager of BlackRock’s retail multisector funds, added oversight of global rates investment to his duties, replacing Mr. Pellicciaro, said Farrell Denby, a company spokesman, in an interview.
Bracebridge Young, Mariner’s CEO, declined to say how much Mr. Pellicciaro’s strategy received.
Hedge fund managers hired using incubation money from the Alaska fund’s separate account will be spun out into seeder funds that will accept investments from external investors after “demonstrating success” in managing their strategies, Mr. Young said.
