Updated with correction
Los Angeles County Employees' Retirement Association committed up to $100 million to Centerbridge Capital Partners III, said David Kushner, chief investment officer of the $47 billion pension fund, in an e-mail.
LACERA has committed to prior Centerbridge Partners funds — $60 million to Centerbridge Capital Partners I and $50 million to Centerbridge Capital Partners II.
So far this year, the board has made $770 million in private equity commitments.
Separately, the board approved a two-step invitation-only RFI for domestic and non-U.S. activist equity managers. In the first phase, a questionnaire will be sent to a target list of managers created by staff with input from general investment consultant Wilshire Associates as well as Grosvenor Capital Management and Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Grosvenor is LACERA's current hedge fund-of-funds manager and GSAM has been named to manage a hedge fund of funds but is still in contract negotiations, Mr. Kushner said.
In the second phase, a more detailed questionnaire will be sent to a subset of managers on the original target list.
The size of the mandates could not be learned by press time.
LACERA had invested $100 million each with three activist managers in 2006 — Shamrock Capital Advisors; Blum Capital Partners, which managed open-end domestic equity limited partnerships under the name Stinson Capital Partners; and Relational Investors. Shamrock was dissolved in 2010, and the Blum/Stinson partnership was terminated in 2011 for poor performance.
LACERA had $128.6 million as of June 30 invested with Relational, but the firm will be dissolving its partnership over the next 17 months due to organizational and personnel issues, a LACERA staff memorandum noted. Ralph Whitworth, Relational's co-founder and partner is taking an extended leave of absence for health reasons.
