LACERS seeks contract extension with PE consultant

The Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System is seeking to extend its contract with its private equity consultant Portfolio Advisors by one year, to 24 January 2018, to allow time to “test the market” for consulting services and potentially select a new advisor.

At the pension fund’s board meeting on 13 September, LACERS’ general manager Thomas Moutes recommended that the current three-year contract with Portfolio Advisors be extended by a year. 

He also asked the board to authorise a draft request for proposal so that LACERS can publicise the RFP for other private equity consultants. 

LACERS and a spokesman for Portfolio Advisors could not confirm if Moutes’ recommendations had passed.

LACERS, which manages $14 billion in assets, expects to publish the RFP on 3 October and has set a 10 October deadline for other private equity consultants to submit questions, according to the 13 September meeting document.

The deadline for proposals from candidates is 14 November, with the selection process expected to end by May 2017.

LACERS decided to issue an RFP to “test the market” for private equity consulting services at a meeting on 23 August, as reported byPrivate Equity International. For the current three-year contract, LACERS has paid $2.18 million and was in the process of negotiating a “more favourable fee structure” with help from an external legal counsel.

Guided by Portfolio Advisors, in the two and a half years leading up to 30 June, LACERS committed $902.5 million to 39 fund managers and 48 individual funds, according to a LACERS meeting agenda.

Portfolio Advisors, which manages assets worth $36.4 billion and advises $46 billion in assets, beat out semi-finalists Hamilton Lane and StepStone Group in LACERS’ original 2013 RFP.