CoPERA Names New Director –

Chris Reilly has been named Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement System’s director of alternative investments, in charge of overseeing the pension fund’s $2.7 billion private equity portfolio. Reilly joined CoPERA’s alternative investments group in 2001 and most recently served as one of its portfolio managers. Prior to joining CoPERA, he held positions with Deutsche Bank Securities and Salomon Smith Barney in New York. Reilly replaces Kevin Kester, who spent the past seven years with CoPERA and left the organization in December.

Reilly’s immediate job will be reducing CoPERA’s overexposure to private equity. The $27 billion pension system’s PE allocation targets have historically fluctuated from as high as 12% to as low as three percent, but the current plan is to reduce its allocation from 10% to around eight percent. This doesn’t mean that CoPERA isn’t making new investments, but just that it is willing to part ways with existing GPs who CoPERA feels are no longer worthy of additional investments. -D.F.