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The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) has invested an additional $300 million for emerging managers who have less than $2 billion in total firm assets.
Leading Edge Investment Advisors LLC, an emerging manager fund-of-funds manager, and Quotient Investors, a manager in CalPERS Management Development Program (MDP), will each receive $150 million.
Last month, CalPERS invested $150 million with FIS Group, an emerging manager fund-of-funds, and $200 million with Redwood Investment Management in CalPERS MDP.
“These recent public equity investments represent a $650 million commitment to emerging managers,” said Russell Read, CalPERS Chief Investment Officer. “These firms give us access to a larger number of managers to generate positive, long-term investment returns and reflect the diversity of the market.”
Leading Edge is a minority-owned emerging fund-of-funds manager who will allocate CalPERS initial $150 million investment among seven emerging managers. Of the seven, one is African American-owned, one Asian American-owned, and one is woman-owned.
Quotient Investors is a new quantitative equity management firm specializing in industry-specific alpha modeling. Quotient’s experienced investment team comes from a major global institutional management firm. New York-based Quotient will run two portfolios: $100 million in a large cap core product and $50 million in a small cap core product. Quotient Investors was funded within the Manager Development Program through a partnership with Strategic Investment Group.
As of February 29, 2008, CalPERS had $1.8 billion invested in its Manager Development Program and $356 million invested in its emerging manager fund-of-funds program.
CalPERS is the nation’s largest public pension fund with assets totaling approximately $240 billion. The System provides retirement and health benefits to 1.5 million State and local public employees and their families. For more information about CalPERS, visit www.calpers.ca.gov.
