The $872 million City of Wichita (Kan.) Pension Management Office, the governing body responsible for the investments of the Wichita Employees Retirement Board and the Police & Fire Retirement Board, has voted to remove Callan Associates from its watch list. The fund has now charged Callan with conducting an asset/liability study, which is expected to be completed in several months.
The $2.95 billion Vermont Pension Investment Committee (VPIC) has authorized its investment consultant, NEPC, to begin a search for fund of hedge funds managers for a currently-unspecified allocation.
Funds are starting to look overseas for new investment opportunities, and Michael Sebastian, principal with Ennis, Knupp & Associates, is leading the charge.
Institutional long-only equity strategies have shorter investment horizons than what investors are actually told, according to a joint study done by Mercer and Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute.
Funds may find that the best way to control funded status volatility is to look outside of the board, according to the results of a quick poll conducted by SEI.
Lorelei Chao, former investment officer at the Orange County Employees Retirement System, has joined Wurts & Associates, where she will be a consultant in the Los Angeles office. Chao resigned from OCERS last summer (MML Daily, 6/1/09).
Bryan Schneider, senior consultant in hedge funds at NEPC, is leaving the firm to take a position in research at EnTrust Capital.
Consultants at Rocaton Investment Advisors have seen an increase in pension funds investing in inflation-hedging products.
Rogerscasey is taking a stand to support active management despite recent plummeting performance and the recent tendency of institutions to switch to passive management.
Dennis Hammond, ceo of consultancy Hammond Associates, has gone back on his advice to allocate 5% more to public equities and is now recommending funds move the money back to fixed-income.
Anthony “Bud” Pellecchia has returned to Callan Associates as a senior v.p. in the Fund Sponsor Consulting group less than a month after being named director of consultant relations in Amalgamated Bank’s custody and investment management division.
Wurts & Associates has tapped Brad Ness, director of institutional client service at Columbia Management, to become a senior consultant in the firm’s Seattle, Wash. office on August 3.
David Grosner, principal and senior consultant at the Hewitt Investment Group, has left the firm.
Callan Associates’ Florham Park, N.J., office is seeking to expand with a fund sponsor consultant.
Jeff Gabrione, head of Americas manager research for Mercer, will move to oversee hedge fund research, following the firm’s restructuring of research into asset class boutiques.
John Hess, director of the Global Research Unit at Aon Investment Consulting, has left the firm and is set to join LCG Associates in June.
T.J. Carlson has joined Ennis Knupp + Associates as a principal and senior consultant in the Client Advisory Group in Chicago.
At a recent meeting of the $56 billion New Jersey Division of Investment, Cliffwater gave a presentation to the State Investment Council on investment opportunities and pitfalls in hedge fund investing in the current market environment.
Watson Wyatt Investment Consulting has named Steve Carlson as head of its West Coast practice on an interim basis, replacing Martha Spano, who recently left the firm.
NEPC has re-structured its alternatives research group so the professionals overseeing hedge funds and private markets research can focus more on strategy development and implementation.