The $64 billion Pennsylvania Public School Employees (PSERS) has appointed Seattle-based Verus Investments to look into some of the pension fund’s investment practices, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Verus will take on the monitoring and oversight of investments, tasks typically handled by James Grossman, CIO of PSERS — the highest-paid employee of the Pennsylvania government.
The “emergency” hiring of Verus will address recent controversial investment practices and an inflated investment report that exaggerated PSERS’ investment profits, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Verus has been tasked with monitoring and overseeing investments during “internal and external investigations” of the pension fund’s portfolio.
As of September 30, 2020, PSERS had a 3.7 percent allocation to the infrastructure asset class.