Alaska Retirement Management Board, Juneau, hired BMO Global Asset Management to run $75 million in a domestic small-cap core equity strategy, said Judith Hall, liaison officer, in an e-mail.
Funding will come from cash.
Also, the board revised its real assets sector targets and allocated an additional $250 million to existing managers. The overall real assets target for fiscal year 2017, which started July 1, is 17%.
Within that real assets target, the board’s infrastructure target for fiscal 2017 was raised 5 percentage points to 17.5% by way of timberland, which was reduced 5 percentage points to 10%.
As a result, existing timberland manager Hancock Natural Resource Group will have its allocation reduced by $150 million. The board will also commit an additional $50 million to IFM Global Infrastructure Fund, managed by IFM Investors. The board first committed $200 million to the fund in 2013. It could not immediately be learned whether the other sector targets within real assets — 35% real estate, 25% farmland, 12.5% energy and zero Treasury inflation-protected securities — have been maintained or changed.
The board also approved an additional $100 million commitment to UBS Trumbull Property Fund, a core real estate fund managed by UBS Realty Investors, and an additional $100 million to a UBS farmland separate account.
Separately, the board put absolute-return manager GAM on watch due to the firm’s announcement that Chief Investment Officer David Smith is stepping down.
The board oversees more than $28 billion in retirement assets, of which $16.5 billion belongs to the Alaska Public Employees’ Retirement System and $8 billion to the Alaska Teachers’ Retirement System.
Last month, the Alaska Pension Obligation Bond Corp. approved the sale of up to $3.5 billion in pension obligation bonds to help shore up the employees and teachers pension funds. Proceeds of the bond sale are expected to be between $2.3 and $3.2 billion and will be distributed to the pension funds on Nov. 2, said Jerry Burnett, deputy commissioner at the Alaska Department of Revenue, in an e-mail.