Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System, Des Moines, approved the hiring of five absolute return managers and a 2025 private markets pacing plan totaling $2.4 billion.
The $45.3 billion pension fund’s board approved the investment actions at its Dec. 6 meeting, a news release said.
First, the board approved investments in AQR Helix Strategy, a diversified trend following fund managed by AQR Capital Management; Brevan Howard Alpha Strategies Master Fund, a macro hedge fund managed by Brevan Howard Capital Management; Bracebridge Absolute Return Composite, an absolute return fixed income fund managed by Bracebridge Capital; multistrategy hedge fund Blackstone Strategic Opportunity Fund; and Navigator Fund, a multistrategy hedge fund managed by Davidson Kempner Capital Management.
IPERS issued an RFP in January in order to identify absolute return products that could potentially be used in a portable alpha strategy.
Actual allocations to each strategy have yet to be determined, according to the news release.
Separately, the board approved a pacing plan consisting of $1 billion to private real assets funds, $700 million to private equity funds and $650 million to private credit funds.
Within private real assets, IPERS plans to make commitments totaling $500 million to other real assets funds (infrastructure), $400 million to real estate and $100 million to co-investments.
Within private equity, IPERS did not say how it plans to split the $700 million in commitments but said for 2024, commitments were split between primary buyout funds (65%), co-investments (20%) and secondaries (15%).
Within private credit, IPERS plans to make commitments totaling $300 million to direct lending funds, $150 million to real assets credit and $100 million each to opportunistic credit and co-investments.
As of Sept. 30, the pension fund’s actual allocations to private equity, private real assets and private credit were 17.6%, 6.7% and 5.9%, respectively; their respective long-term targets are 17%, 8% and 9.5%.
