The governing board of the New York State Teachers' Retirement System, Albany, has approved the hiring of StepStone Group Real Estate LP as a real estate consultant and Meketa Investment Group as a secondary real estate consultant.
Both firms will be hired for one-year terms pending satisfactory completion of due diligence, the board announced at its quarterly meeting Oct. 26. The contracts were awarded after the retirement system conducted an RFP. The incumbent real estate consultant, Callan, was invited to bid, Heidi Brennan, a retirement system spokeswoman wrote in an email. Real estate equity represents $16.3 billion in retirement assets, and real estate debt accounts for $7.7 billion.
The board also renewed the agreement with StepStone Group LP to serve as a private equity and private debt consultant, for one year, effective Feb. 1, 2024. Private equity and private debt represent about $18.1 billion of total plan assets.
The board reported a 9% net return on investment for the fiscal year ended June 30 with assets of $137.2 billion.
For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2022, the retirement system's net return was -7.1% with assets of $132 billion.
As of Sept. 30, 2023, the system's unaudited assets were $132.8 billion. Also, as of Sept. 30, the largest asset allocation was domestic equity (32.7%), followed by domestic fixed income (13.9%), International equity (13.5%), real estate equity (12.5%) and private equity (12%).
Six other asset categories were in single digits: real estate debt (5.9%), global equity (3.7%), global bonds (2%), private debt (1.6%), cash and short-term equivalents (1.2%) and high-yield bonds (1.1%).
