Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, Harrisburg, is offering about $2 billion of private equity fund stakes for sale after prices for such investments reached the highest levels since the 2008 financial crisis.
The $53.3 billion pension fund hired investment bank Cogent Partners to manage the sale process, said three people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The amount for sale is less than a quarter of the plan’s $8.7 billion private equity holdings as of June 30.
“We are considering a secondary sale since we are overweight in our long-term allocation to private equity and have been since coming out of the financial crisis,” spokeswoman Evelyn Tatkovski Williams said.
The pension fund’s level of private market investments was near its 21% target as of June 30, according to data on the pension fund’s website. Private markets includes private equity, private debt and venture capital.
Bill Murphy, a managing director at Cogent, declined to comment on the sale process.
The pension fund reported a net investment return of 3.3% for private markets during the quarter ended June 30 and 14% for the latest fiscal year.
