The $70.5 billion Washington State Investment Board has prioritised hiring the best managers in public equities and is willing to sacrifice the number of active investment relationships in lieu of the managers it believes are “truly exceptional” as it enters 2010 with plans for global manager searches.
The $206 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) set its investment strategy roadmap for 2010 at a board offsite last week, as chief investment officer, Joe Dear, attributes strong gains in 2009 to a “sharpened investment focus”.
The Kansas Public Employees Retirement System is slowly reducing its exposure to global equities as it explores “just about everything else”. Amanda White spoke with chief investment officer Robert ‘Vince’ Smith about the fund’s plans for 2010 which include an asset/liability study and the reorganisation of its equities allocations.
In this research brief, Tim Barron suggests the entire notion of the “new normal” being somehow different is an exaggeration or an embellishment. He says there is nothing “new” about this normal but it is more appropriately described as “back to normal.” And, that if it lasts for three or more years, it will then be viewed as THE normal and we will become adjusted – until it changes again.
New research by the Pension Research Council at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, examines whether workers seeking higher returns can expect to do better than the CPF-managed default, by moving their money into professionally-managed unit trusts. The evidence is mixed.
The $42 billion Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management (PRIM) will move half of its developed non-US equity portfolio and 25 per cent of its emerging market equity portfolio into passive strategies and has begun a search for a single manager for each asset class with a commencement date of May.