Texas State Board of Education approved the hire of two managers to run a total of $900 million in emerging markets equity for the $30.5 billion Texas Permanent School Fund, Austin.
At their Friday board meeting, state education commissioners approved the selection of BlackRock and Quantitative Management Associates to manage $450 million each in active, quantitative emerging market equity strategies, a webcast showed. The managers were chosen by the Committee on School Finance/Permanent Fund at its meeting Thursday.
The Texas State Board of Education oversees investment of the school fund.
The funding of the emerging markets equity asset class completes PSF’s asset allocation, Holland Timmins, executive administrator and chief investment officer, told finance committee members during their meeting, a webcast showed.
Separately, the board concurred with the recommendation of the finance committee to commit up to $100 million in Blackstone Group’s core-plus real estate strategy. Also approved was an additional commitment of up to $25 million in Blackstone Europe IV; PSF previously committed $75 million to the fund in mid 2013.
Including the new commitments, PSF has earmarked a total of $881 million to 11 separate real estate strategies since the beginning of 2013, Pensions & Investments’ archives show.
The fund’s returns have topped those of its benchmark in every measurement period ended June 30. For the 12 months, the fund returned 16.8% compared with the benchmark’s 16.3%; three years, 9.7% vs. 9.4%; five years, 12.9% vs. 12.6%; and 10 years, 7.4% vs. the benchmark’s 7.2%.
