Maryland allocates $500 million to 4 managers

Maryland State Retirement & Pension System, Baltimore, invested $450 million with three absolute-return managers and committed $50 million in private equity in early 2018.

According to documents from the Feb. 20 board meeting, the $51.9 billion pension fund invested $200 million in FORT Global Contrarian, a commodity trading adviser fund, $150 million in Nineteen77 Global Merger Arbitrage, managed by UBS O'Connor, and $100 million to Tenacis Systematic Macro Fund, managed by Tenacis Capital.

In private equity, Maryland committed $50 million to Clearlake Capital Partners V, a fund managed by Clearlake Capital Group to make opportunistic debt and equity investments in North American middle-market companies.

The allocations came from cash, said Andrew Palmer, chief investment officer, in an email.

As of Dec. 31, the pension fund's asset allocation was 52.5% growth equity, 20.9% rate sensitive and cash, 10.8% real assets, 8.8% credit and 7% absolute return.

The target allocations are 50% growth equity, 19% rate sensitive and cash, 14% real assets, 9% credit and 8% absolute return.

The pension fund returned 15.01% for the year ended Dec. 31, 6.85% for three years, 7.61% for five years and 4.69% for 10 years. All but the three-year returns exceeded policy benchmarks.

One-year returns by asset class were 24.32% for growth equity, 6.61% for rate sensitive, 10.01% for credit/debt strategies, 5.92% for real assets and 2.04% for absolute return.