Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, Washington, is searching for a money manager for its C Fund, a stock index fund that tracks the S&P 500 index. As of December, the C Fund had $140.7 billion in assets.
The Thrift Savings Plan had a total of $439.7 billion as of December. Except for the government bond G Fund, which is managed internally, the rest of the TSP's assets are currently managed by BlackRock. It could not be learned by press time why the RFP was issued and whether BlackRock is invited to rebid.
Bidders must have at least 15 years of experience managing S&P 500 index assets of at least $60 billion, and 10 years of securities lending experience, “to ensure that offerors are of sufficient size to be able to absorb TSP assets without creating undue strain on the index provider's ability to manage tracking error and/or causing service quality to be negatively impacted,” according to the RFP.
The contract is for one year, with four one-year options. The FRTIB expects to award the contract in the second quarter of the year. Bids are due March 16 at 5 p.m. EDT.
Officials at FRTIB couldn't be reached by press time.
