CalSTRS Adds Three More To Team

Staffing up to keep on pace with its growing private equity portfolio, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System plans to add three more people to its alternative investment team over the next two fiscal years.

Despite a statewide hiring freeze and a state budget deadlocked in the legislature, if the state grants the $100 billion Sacramento-based pension fund its budget requests and exempts these positions from the hiring freeze, CalSTRS will add a single private equity investment officer to its team this fiscal year.

It plans to add two more investment officers in the 2003-2004 fiscal year-one to support its secondary investments and co-investments and another to support investments in limited partnerships. The agency’s fiscal year has barely started, as it began on July 1.

Each of the positions is a civil service position; each qualified candidate must be designated as such by the state.

In November, CalSTRS upped it sprivate equity allocation to 8% and adopted a five-year implementation plan to reach that target. Currently, about 4.4% of its portfolio is allocated to private equity investments. That figure should reach $5.4 billion by the end of this fiscal year.

According to the pension fund’s private equity group’s 2002-2003 business plan, the continued drive into private equity, “requires a dynamic investment policy, an investment organization adapted to the dynamic and changing complexity of the market while maintaining the best practices in this asset class.”

Additionally, the pension fund is in the final stages of selecting an U.S. gatekeeper for its alternative investment portfolio. CalSTRS invests in direct equity, private equity and venture capital through its alternative investment portfolio.

Contact Carolina Braunschweig