By Anastasia Donde
Like many public pension plans, the Pennsylvania Public School Employees' Retirement System got hooked on the concept of portable alpha earlier in the decade but ultimately lived to regret it when the market crashed and the strategy produced disappointing results. Now the pension is regrouping following its decision last year to reshape that program and also carve out a separate hedge fund bucket.
PSERS has gotten religion quickly. Since making the decision to rethink its approach to portable alpha and hedge funds, the $46.7 billion pension plan has already made several direct investments in blue-chip hedge fund managers and is about to ratchet up its exposure even further. At board meetings on March 11 and 12, the finance committee approved raising the pension's allocation to absolute return strategies from 7.5% to 10%. This higher allocation to absolute return managers means the pension will need to add even more...