Worcestershire County Council Pension Fund, Worcester, England, hired EQT to manage a £65 million ($92.5 million) allocation to corporate private debt, a spokeswoman said.
The £1.9 billion pension plan will invest in private debt for the first time, the spokeswoman added. "We disinvested some of our monies in our current passive Legal & General (Investment Management) equity fund in line with our pensions investment strategy," she said. Consultant bfinance assisted with the manager selection.
Separately, the pension fund committed £25 million to Hermes Infrastructure Fund II, managed by Hermes Investment Management. It also made additional commitments of £25 million each to funds managed by First State Investments and Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners. The pension originally committed £75 million to each of the funds, which were not named.
Worcestershire had 49% of assets in pooled investments, 35% in equity and 6.3% in fixed income as of March 31, 2017. In addition, it had 4.6% in property, 3.7% in infrastructure investments and 1% in cash as of the same date. The remainder was in derivatives.
