New Jersey hunts for consultants

The New Jersey Investment Council, which manages the state pension funds, is looking for a general investment consultant and consultant for three specialist investment classes.

The RFP outlines that the fund is looking for contractors to collectively provide general investment consulting services; private equity investment consulting services; real estate investment consulting services; and hedge fund investment consulting services.

The general investment consultant will be expected to provide an annual asset class structure study, and conduct an asset liability study every two years, which at a minimum includes recommendations for an optimal asset allocation including implementation methodology and a timetable for achieving such asset allocation.

Strategic Investment Solutions currently provides investment consulting services including private equity to the fund, and Cliffwater provides hedge fund consulting

At the end of September the department of investment, which manages $70.2 billion, had 24 per cent in domestic equities, 35 per cent in domestic fixed income, 20 per cent in its international portfolio, 16 per cent in alternatives, 3 per cent in cash, and 2 per cent in other.

This represents an overweight position in domestic equities (by 4 per cent), underweight in domestic fixed income, and an underweight in alternatives (which includes commodities, hedge funds, private equity and real estate).

Sponsored Content

For the September quarter the fund returned 8.27 per cent.

Leave a Comment

Sort content by

Blinder: a power of paradox at Princeton

Pension funds or any investor holding a slug of long-term fixed income needs to factor in some capital losses soon, says Princeton academic and former vice president of the Federal Reserve, Alan Blinder. “The timing is difficult to predict, but three or 15 months, it doesn’t matter. It is predictable,” he says. “The unpredictable part

UniSuper defies accepted thinking

Mention any asset class to John Pearce, chief investment officer of Australian superannuation fund UniSuper, and he will doggedly set out the good and bad thinking around it. A common source of his ire is the sight of investors herding around a belief based on a lack of rigorous thinking. Good practice for him involves

OTPP deals with underfunding

Even the most successful and well run pension plans are facing underfunding challenges. The $129-billion Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is the latest to investigate solutions to solve the mismatch between the pension promise and the funds required to meet that, says Jim Leech, chief executive of the organisation . OTPP has appointed a taskforce – chaired

Fewer, bigger funds for UK?

Australia, the US, Canada and Denmark have all done it. Kazakhstan and even Oman are talking about it. Increasingly, public sector pension funds are merging or pooling their assets into fewer bigger schemes. It’s no surprise the debate is gathering momentum in the United Kingdom, ripe for consolidation with a Local Government Pension Fund Scheme

Scenario analysis: applicable to anything?

Attempts to apply a formula to asset allocation based on an asset’s historical volatility and relationship with other assets tend to fail when presented with black-swan events. Equities tend to rise along with commodities except when presented with political events such as the price hikes in oil in 1973 that sent equities into free fall.

Kurtzer on Holy Land of opportunity

The Middle East is in a state of dynamic flux, with positive change manifesting itself in the countries going through an economic and financial revolution as much as a political one. Institutional investors from all parts of the world have a role to play in that revolution, according to former US ambassador to Egypt and

Previous