The Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association (LACERA) has chosen DWS as its new separate account manager, according to board meeting documents.
DWS will manage an active Real Assets completion portfolio in a separate account. DWS was chosen out of nine applications, including firms such as Pimco, Brookfield and Invesco. Cohen & Steers and BlackRock were the two other finalists.
The purpose of the search was to identify qualified managers within the liquid real assets investment manager universe to manage a completion portfolio in LACERA’s new real asset categories of infrastructure and natural resources. In August 2018, LACERA created a 3 percent allocation to infrastructure. With the new portfolio, LACERA wants to gain exposure to the desired asset categories relatively quickly using liquid public market instruments such as global listed infrastructure stocks and natural resources equities in oil and gas, mining, and agriculture.
DWS is a global asset manager. The core Liquid Real Assets team, which will service LACERA’s mandate, is located in Chicago and would leverage the firm’s broader team. DWS has $805 billion of assets under management, of which $82 billion are in real assets and $21.5 billion are in liquid public market real asset strategies.
