City of Milwaukee Employes’ Retirement System will ask trustees Thursday to approve a search for an emerging markets equity manager to invest a total $96 million, the $4.8 billion pension fund’s first specific allocation to the asset class.
“The emerging markets search plan will be proposed and discussed at the Dec. 10 investment committee meeting,” David M. Silber, CMERS chief investment officer, said in an e-mail. If it’s approved, investment consultant Callan Associates will lead the search, Mr. Silber said.
CMERS plans to hire one manager, Mr. Silber said.
The move is a result of a new public equity allocation CMERS adopted Nov. 23 that added a 2% allocation to emerging markets.
“Historically, CMERS has accessed its emerging markets exposure solely through its non-U.S. equity and global equity managers tactically purchasing stocks in emerging markets countries,” Mr. Silber said. “CMERS identified the need for this small dedicated emerging markets allocation in order to get the fund’s total public equity exposure to emerging markets closer to the emerging markets weighting” of the MSCI All-Country World investible market index.
The new public equity allocation also reduced the targets of domestic equities to 25% from 28% and international equities to 20% from 22%. CMERS reallocated much of this reduction to private equity and absolute-return strategies.
