The board of the $10.4 billion Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System, Little Rock, voted to terminate its domestic equity mandate with Intech Investment Management, citing persistent weak performance as well as recent organizational changes at the quantitative money management firm.
The board, at its latest quarterly meeting Wednesday, approved a motion to move the $403 million in U.S. large-cap growth equities Intech managed on behalf of the pension fund as of March 31 to an index fund while a search for another growth equity manager is conducted.
Materials distributed by the board showed Intech's quantitative U.S. large-cap growth equity portfolio for APERS trailing its Russell 1000 Growth benchmark index by more than 8 percentage points for the 12 months ended March 31; more than 5 percentage points for the three-year period and more than 4.5 percentage points for the past five years.
Andre Prawoto, a spokesman for Intech, couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
At the same meeting, the board approved a motion to issue a request for qualifications for a private equity consultant to advise APERS regarding how to move forward with its decision, made at the board's prior meeting in February, to add a 5% weighting for private equity to its strategic asset allocation.
