Texas Employees Hires For Leading Edge for emerging manager-of-managers program


The $22 billion Employees Retirement System of Texas hired Leading Edge Investment Advisors and Legato Capital Management as emerging manager-of-managers.

Plan Spokeswoman Mary Jane Wardlow said the two were hired at a board meeting today to develop a $100 million domestic public equities emerging manager program. Specifics on how the $100 million will be allocated has not been determined, however both firms will be benchmarked against the Standard & Poor's 1500 Index.

The other finalist, Northern Trust Global Advisors, withdrew from consideration as a result of ERS' legal standards, which NTGA "considered insurmountable," according to the board documents. Wardlow could not provide further comment.

Also, the plan will continue to evaluate additional candidates for the domestic equities emerging manager program, according to documents. The plan issued a public equities emerging manager RFQ in January (fin|daily, 1/19).

Separately, the plan is also in the midst of a private equity real estate emerging manager search (fin|daily, 3/29).

In addition to public equities and real estate, the plan is also interested in creating emerging manager programs for international equities and private equity (fin|daily, 12/2).