St. Louis Public School Retirement System hired Lazard Asset Management to run a $28 million active emerging markets debt portfolio, recently released board meeting minutes said.
The $832 million pension fund conducted an invitation-only search in the summer for its first emerging markets debt manager. At the time, the pension fund had yet to hire any managers after creating a 4% target allocation to the asset class in 2013.
The board approved the investment committee’s recommendation at its Oct. 19 meeting. Ashmore Investment Management and BlueBay Asset Management were the other finalists.
Separately, the investment committee recommended terminating the pension fund’s investment in Wellington Management’s Diversified Inflation Hedges strategy, a commodities mutual fund, because of underperformance. The board is scheduled to vote on the recommendation at its Dec. 14 meeting.
Andrew Clark, executive director, did not return a phone call by press time.
