body>
AUSTIN, Texas (HedgeWorld.com)–The Teacher Retirement System of Texas has signed a contract with Tremont Advisers Inc.,* Rye, N.Y., as adviser for the pension fund’s hedge fund allocation.
Tremont will be focusing on two areas: strategy allocation and manager selection. The US$80 billion pension fund has a 1.5% allocation to strategically traded securities, an investment strategy that has been in place since 2000. So far the pension fund has made some direct hedge fund investments and is now asking Tremont to monitor those existing investments in addition to selecting new funds, said John Hock, executive vice president and head of global sales at Tremont.
To date the public pension fund has not taken an active role in the allocation that includes hedge fund strategies such as market neutral, event driven, long/short equity or fixed income.
This is the second pension fund allocation Tremont has gained in recent months. In May, the firm was hired by the YMCA Retirement Fund to manage US$50 million in funds of funds. Tremont is managing the strategy allocation and manager selection of the New York-based pension fund in part through tools developed by RiskMetrics and Tremont.