Seattle City Employees goes with ABS Investment Management for emerging markets equities

Seattle City Employees' Retirement System hired ABS Investment Management to run $100 million in active emerging markets equities, said Jason Malinowski, chief investment officer, in an email.

The $2.6 billion pension fund hired ABS to run the money in ABS' multimanager emerging markets commingled fund following a review of the structure of the pension fund's emerging markets equity portfolio.

Staff and investment consultant NEPC recommended "a fundamental investment process is preferred to a quantitative investment process and that country/regional specialists have somewhat more merit than generalist managers," according to Oct. 12 board of administration minutes.

Funding comes from the termination of J.P. Morgan Asset Management (JPM) from a $100 million active emerging markets equity portfolio, which the minutes said JPMAM ran in a quantitative and generalist strategy. Mr. Malinowski said there were no issues with performance.

The pension fund's public equity allocation as of June 30 was 55.7%; the target is 48%.