San Francisco City & County Employees terminates Prima Capital

San Francisco City & County Employees' Retirement System terminated Prima Capital Advisors from its $107 million commercial real estate debt portfolio, said Darlene Armanino, executive assistant, in an email.

The $25.4 billion pension fund's board on Wednesday approved the staff's recommendation to terminate Prima due to "portfolio construction and liquidity considerations for the overall liquid credit portfolio rather than either a concern regarding Prima's investment process or portfolio performance," according to a memo to the board. The pension fund originally hired Prima in 1995, and the memo noted its annualized net returns since then have exceeded those of multiple benchmarks.

SFERS has been gradually lowering its exposure to liquid credit since the board's approval in September 2017 of dropping that target to 3% from 6.2%. As of April 30, the actual allocation to liquid credit was 5.1%.

The staff memo said the liquid credit allocation has been reduced to date by reductions in existing managers' portfolios instead of terminations, but "as staff anticipates the need to raise further funds, there are a limited number of liquid credit managers from which capital may be efficiently drawn."