New York State Common Retirement Fund, Albany, and Goldman Sachs Asset Management established a strategic partnership to run $2 billion in active global equity strategies.
GSAM will create a multimanager portfolio for the $180.7 billion pension fund and allocate dynamically among active domestic and international equity managers, said retirement fund staff who engineered the parameters of the new portfolio.
The NYSCRF-GSAM global equity arrangement is one of the largest strategic partnerships to date among U.S. pension funds, according to Pensions & Investments' archives.
The strategic partnership was the most efficient way to add actively managed global equity strategies to the portfolio, given the small size of the CRF global equity team, said internal staff.
To date, the fund’s $100 billion global equity portfolio has had a heavy passive weighting. The fund’s target allocation to passive within its $70 billion domestic equity is 80%, but now stands at 88%, while 35% of the $30.5 billion international/global equity portfolio is indexed. The domestic indexed assets are managed internally, while the international/global indexed assets are managed by BlackRock.
“Working closely and creatively with GSAM's team and their resources will extend the reach of the fund's global investment team,” said Vicky Fuller, chief investment officer, in a news release.
Funding for the new allocation will come from cash and reductions in the allocations of existing managers.
GSAM is prohibited from including its own active global equity investment strategies in the new portfolio, but will provide strategic advice to CRF's global equity team as well as enhanced analytics and reporting for the new actively managed global stock portfolio.
