OAK BROOK, Ill. – Today, the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund (IMRF) Board of Trustees approved multiple investment recommendations, subject to satisfactory legal due diligence. These recommendations were made to implement the results of the 2016 Asset Liability Modeling (ALM) Study. The ALM Study recommended adding a two percent target allocation to Public Real Assets, reducing the Core Plus Fixed Income allocation from 12 percent to 10 percent and increasing the Core Fixed Income allocations from 12 percent to 14.5 percent
Infrastructure
These recommendations were the result of IMRF’s request for proposals (RFP) for Publicly Listed Infrastructure Equity and/or Debt and Unlisted Infrastructure Equity and/or Debt. The RFP was launched on February 1, 2017.
The Board approved the following Publicly Listed Infrastructure commitments, each up to:
- $300 million to Cohen & Steers
- $150 million to Brookfield
The Board approved the following Unlisted Infrastructure commitments, each up to:
- $100 million to Oaktree Transportation and Energy Infrastructure Fund (Parallel), L.P.
- $100 million to Partners Group Direct Infrastructure 2016 (USD) A, L.P.
Fixed Income
In order to increase the Core Fixed Income allocation by 2.5 percent and reduce the Core Plus allocation by 2%, consistent with the 2016 ALM Study recommendations, the Board approved the following fixed income manager recommendations:
- Termination and full withdrawal of BlackRock Core-Plus mandate (approximately $750 million)
- Additional allocation of $200 million to Earnest Core Fixed Income mandate
- Additional allocation of $200 million to Garcia Hamilton Core Fixed Income mandate
- Additional allocation of $200 million to Piedmont Core Fixed Income mandate
- Allocation of residual assets of approximately $150 million to either the BlackRock US Debt Index or to the Northern Trust Bloomberg Barclays US Aggregate Index
Earnest, Garcia Hamilton and Piedmont are minority-owned fixed income investment firms. Following the implementation of these recommendations, the approximate allocation to each of these managers will be as follows:
- Earnest Core Fixed Income mandate: $750 million
- Garcia Hamilton Core Fixed Income mandate: $720 million
- Piedmont Core Fixed Income mandate: $750 million
All of today’s investment recommendations are consistent with the Board-approved 2016 ALM Study recommendations.
As of March 31, 2017, the IMRF total portfolio was valued at $37.6 billion.
