San Mateo County Employees' Retirement Association, Redwood City, Calif., committed $15 million to Bernhard Capital Partners II, a private equity buyout fund managed by Bernhard Capital Partners Management focused on acquiring midmarket service companies, according to a news release on the pension fund's website.
The action took place at the board meeting on Monday. The $4 billion pension plan has an approximately $240 million private equity program.
Separately, the pension plan reported it returned a net 12.6% for the fiscal year ended June 30, according to a report by investment consultant Verus Advisory posted on the pension fund's website.
The fiscal-year return matched the pension fund's policy benchmark, which also returned 12.6%, the Verus report showed. By asset class, net returns for the fiscal year were public equities, 11.7% compared to the custom benchmark's 11.4%; fixed income, 3.9% (custom benchmark, 3.2%); real estate, 4.3% (NCREIF Fund index-Open End Diversified Core Equity benchmark, 3.5%); and private equity, 11.3% (custom benchmark, 9.8%).
For the three years ended June 30, the pension fund returned an annualized net 5.5%, compared to 5.3% for its custom benchmark; five years, 9.4% (custom benchmark, 9.2%); 10 years, 4.6% (5.5%).
The fiscal-year return helped boost the pension plan's funding ratio to 84.3% as of June 30, up from 83.1% a year earlier, according to an actuarial report from Milliman contained in the materials for the pension funds' meeting Monday.
