Los Angeles County Employees' Retirement Association, Pasadena, Calif., committed up to $100 million to private equity fund Palladium Equity Partners IV, said David Kushner, chief investment officer for the $42 billion pension fund.
This is the pension fund's first investment with Palladium, Mr. Kushner said in an e-mail.
Separately, LACERA executives adopted a private equity commitment target of $1.8 billion in 2014, up 12.5% from the 2013 commitment target. The commitment pace is necessary to attain the pension fund's 11% private equity target allocation in four to five years.
LACERA also adopted a process to prevent conflicts of interest when the pension fund buys properties from real estate funds in which LACERA is the only limited partner. LACERA has current commitments of $100 million each to two apartment development-focused funds of one: CityView Bay Area I (CVBA-I) and CityView Bay Area II.
The terms of both funds anticipate that LACERA could retain the general partner, CityView, as asset manager following a purchase of the finished core property by LACERA. The potential conflict is that CityView as the fund's general partner would be both representing the commingled fund as the seller and LACERA as the buyer in determining the property's price. The new process is expected to remedy the conflict of interest by hiring an independent fiduciary to represent LACERA as the buyer of the property from the fund.
