Fort Worth (Texas) Employees' Retirement Fund hired Northern Trust Asset Management to manage roughly $270 million each in a global equity index strategy and a global multifactor equity index strategy, said Joelle Mevi, executive director and chief investment officer, in an e-mail.
Funding will come primarily from the termination of a Northern Trust international index strategy, a State Street Global Advisors domestic large-cap multifactor equity index strategy, and active domestic all-cap equity strategies managed by Jennison Associates and Vaughan Nelson Investment Management. Funding will also come from the termination of Och-Ziff Capital Management's OZ Master Fund and the ongoing redemption from Perry Capital's Perry Partners.
The pension fund had roughly $105.5 million with SSgA, $88.5 million in the Northern Trust international index strategy, $66.6 million with Vaughan Nelson, $61.2 million with Jennison and $23 million with Och-Ziff. The pension fund initially decided to terminate Perry Capital last November due to underperformance and the departure of its CIO, David Russekoff. The pension fund had $16.5 million invested with Perry at the time.
The new Northern Trust strategies will fall under the pension fund's growth portfolio, which has a 44% target of the overall $2.1 billion pension fund and consists of global equity, growth hedge funds, real estate investment trusts, emerging market debt and high-yield debt.
The pension fund is also now targeting a passive exposure of 60% for its growth portfolio, up from the previous 32%, Ms. Mevi wrote.
The terminations are related to the portfolio restructuring.