New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer and the New York City Pension Fund trustees announced a $600 million expansion of the city retirement systems’ in-house emerging managers
According to Stringer, this will raise the total assets committed through the program to more than $1.5 billion.
The expansion further raises the total assets committed to small and emerging investments across all asset classes to $8.8 billion, up 57% since 2014.
The combined value of the city's five major pension funds was $194 billion as of November.
The program is one of a series of the New York City Retirement System’s initiatives aimed at amplifying opportunities for smaller managers, including minority and women-owned managers, and in turn, ensuring a diverse talent pool to optimize the pension funds’ investments.
“Our emerging manager program enables us to invest with the best of the best, period,” Stringer said. “We can’t let industry roadblocks dictate our strategies — we have to build pipelines for talent and for stronger investments.”
The program builds on NYCRS’ graduation policy established in 2015 for private equity emerging managers, which provides a pathway for small best-in-class managers to attain a larger role in managing city funds.
Already, two emerging managers have graduated from the program to become direct core private equity managers for the five retirement systems.
This new expansion joins a series of efforts by Stringer and fellow pension fund trustees to strengthen emerging manager investments and increase diversity among investment managers, including raising the retirement systems’ investments across asset classes committed to minority and women-owned investment managers by more than 40% and investments committed to emerging managers by 57% across all asset classes since 2014.
The five major pension funds are the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, the Teachers’ Retirement System of the City of New York, the New York City Police Pension Fund, the New York City Fire Pension Fund and the New York City Board of Education Retirement System.
