Texas Municipal Retirement System plans to commit as much as $15 billion over the next five years to a program that will allow it to invest directly in private markets transactions alongside its external fund managers.
The $44 billion pension will commit between $10 million and $200 million each in co-investment opportunities, including in secondaries and growth capital investments, according to a statement from the system.
The move will allow Texas Municipal to deepen its manager relationships and save “hundreds of millions in fees” annually, Yup Kim, its chief investment officer, said in an email to Bloomberg News.
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With co-investing, private equity backers put money into specific deals rather than pooled funds. They have become popular because co-investments typically don’t charge fees and allow clients to bet more strategically. More institutional investors have introduced or expanded their co-investment programs in recent years to enhance their net returns.
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Texas Municipal’s program will commit capital to global managers across venture capital, buyouts, real assets and structured equity, the pension said in a statement. It will consider managers in its private markets portfolio and will be “open to others too,” Kim said.
The pension will make these investments alongside its managers, focusing on five broad investment themes including digital transformation, health care innovation and energy modernization, it said in the statement.
Texas Municipal’s co-investments surged to 9% of total private markets net asset value as of June 30 from 5% at the start of 2024, according to pension documents. The pension expects co-investments to account for nearly 30% of the private markets net asset value in the next five years, Kim said in an email to Bloomberg News.
California Public Employees’ Retirement System relaunched its co-investment strategy in Dec. 2022 and expects to save $400 million in management fees and carried interest, or the share of a fund manager’s profits, over the life of each $1 billion co-investment, a pension document shows. That translates into approximately $25 billion of reduced costs for 10 years of commitments at an annual deployment of $15.5 billion each year.
California State Teachers’ Retirement System announced a co-investment partnership on Tuesday, with Carlyle AlpInvest, for climate-related investments.