El Paso County Retirement Plan, Colorado Springs, Colo., will hear recommendations on potential hedge fund-of-funds managers from its investment consultant, Watershed Investment Consultants, at its Aug. 25 board meeting, said Tom Pfeifle, executive director.
Any potential allocation will likely be discussed at the meeting.
Mr. Pfeifle referred additional questions on the search process to Dale Connors, managing director and co-founder of Watershed Investment Consultants. Mr. Connors did not immediately return a telephone call seeking more information.
In June, the $319 million pension fund liquidated its direct hedge fund investment in GAM U.S. Institutional Trading II, worth about $12 million, due to the poor performance of macro hedge funds in general.
“Since the inception of this account (December 2010), GAM Trading Strategy has outperformed the peer HFRI/HFRX Macro index by over 2.5%. The fact surrounding performance is that GAM has outperformed the benchmark, and has not lost the client money,” said Joseph F. Gieger, managing director at GAM USA, in an e-mail. “However it is important to understand that trading strategy/macro benchmarks have been negative for over the past four years. So relatively speaking, GAM has done a very good job in protecting capital in a negative return environment.”