Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System rehired Townsend Group as its real estate consultant, following an RFP in September, said Rod June, CIO for the $22.2 billion pension fund, in an email.
Pension fund officials had launched the RFP to test the marketplace. StepStone Group was the other semifinalist. LACERS has a 12% target allocation to real assets, which includes a 7% target allocation to real estate. The pension fund had $2.8 billion in real assets, including real estate, as of Feb. 28.
LACERS also rehired Segal Marco Advisors as its consulting actuary, following an RFP in January.
Separately, pension fund officials renewed the contract of Oberweis Asset Management to run a $275 million active non-U.S. small-cap equities portfolio. Oberweis employs a growth-biased, fundamental research-based approach to investing. The contract is being renewed for three years. It was set to expire Dec. 31.
The board also made a number of changes to its proxy voting policy, including a provision that it would vote against or withhold its vote from the chair of the nominating committee or other directors on a case-by-case basis of any public company that does not have a female director on its board and encourage public companies to have at least one female director who identifies as a member of an underrepresented group on its board. LACERS also will vote against incumbent directors at public companies that have not taken the minimum steps needed to understand, assess and mitigate climate change-related risk to the company. The pension fund will also abstain from voting or vote against directors, committee members or the entire board at companies that have a common stock structure with unequal voting rights.
