Ohio PERS Appoints New Chief

The $76 billion Ohio Public Employees Retirement System named Karen Carraher, a long-time veteran of the pension fund, to be its new executive director.

The pension system has a 10 percent allocation to private equity. Its main fund has more than $3 billion in invested private equity capital, including investments with Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, Permira, TPG Capital and Warburg Pincus. The system’s chief investment officer, John Lane, will report to Carraher.

Carraher “offers tremendous experience and a deep knowledge of the pension industry,” said Ken Thomas, OPERS’s chairman, in a prepared statement. “She…provides us great confidence in maintaining our forward momentum both organizationally and with all the initiatives facing us,” he said. The appointment, which took effect immediately, was announced by the pension’s board.

Carraher has been serving as OPERS’s interim director since February, when Christopher DeRose, the pension’s previous director, unexpectedly resigned to take an executive position at Ingenix, a Minnesota-based health-care consulting firm.

Carraher, who was also the finance director at OPERS, has been with the pension since 2002. OPERS has not yet named a new finance director.

OPERS is the nation’s 12th largest pension. It is based in Columbus and was founded in 1935.