1. Illinois Municipal commits up to $195 million,
terminates BlackRock
By RICK BAERT | March 3, 2015 4:01 pm | Updated 4:03 pm
Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, Oak Brook, approved committing a total of up to $170 million to three
real estate funds and up to $25 million to an energy fund.
The pension fund approved the commitments Feb. 27.
The $34.9 billion pension fund committed $100 million to Blackstone Real Estate Partners VIII, a global
real estate fund managed by Blackstone Group; and up to $35 million each to Almanac Realty
Securities VII, a real estate private placement fund managed by Almanac Realty Investors, and
Torchlight Debt Opportunity Fund V, a commercial real estate fund managed by Torchlight Investors.
IMRF in May 2013 committed $100 million each to Blackstone Real Estate Partners Asia and Blackstone
Real Estate Debt Strategies II, and in October 2012 committed up to $50 million to Blackstone Real
Estate Partners VII. In April 2012, commitments of up to $50 million were made to Almanac Realty
Securities Fund VI and up to $15 million to Almanac Realty Securities Fund VI Sidecar II. And in October
2012, the pension fund committed $30 million to Torchlight Debt Opportunity IV with a follow-on $35
million commitment in November 2013, spokeswoman Megha Kauffman said.
Also, up to $25 million was committed to EnCap Energy Capital Fund X, an oil and gas fund managed by
EnCap Investments. IMRF has previously invested a total of $9 million in EnCap Energy Capital funds
VIII and IX through private equity fund-of-funds manager Abbott Capital Management.
Separately, the pension fund hired Garcia Hamilton & Associates to directly manage $100 million in
active domestic core fixed income. Garcia Hamilton will continue to manage $122 million for IMRF
through a fixed-income manager-of-managers program run by Progress Investment Management.
Funding for the new allocation will come from the terminations of active domestic growth equity managers
BlackRock (BLK), which ran $513 million in large caps, and Fortaleza Asset Management, which ran $45
million in small caps. The remaining assets will be moved to an $855 million Northern Trust Asset
Management S&P 500 growth index fund.
BlackRock was terminated for performance, while Fortaleza was terminated for performance and
organizational changes at the firm, Ms. Kauffman said. Spokesmen at BlackRock and Fortaleza said their
companies had no comment.