REAL ESTATE - The California Public Employees Retirement Scheme (CalPERS) last week appointed Ted Eliopoulos senior investment officer for real estate.
The appointment ends several months of interim in-house management after the previous incumbent, Mike McCook, left in April to join Kenwood Investments.
Eliopoulos will join CalPERS in the New Year after little more than a year in his current job as state chief deputy treasurer.
In his new role, reporting to chief investment officer Russell Read, Eliopoulos will oversee both staff and external real estate fund managers.
No details were available on the rest of the candidate pool. However, CalPERS cited Eliopoulos’s "broad corporate and administrative" industry experience as a factor in the decision to appoint him. In the past he has represented the state treasurer on the pension fund’s investment committee.
It is not yet clear whether Eliopoulos’s appointment will mark a change in CalPERS’s real estate investment strategy. McCook had set out a strategy to invest around 50% of the pension fund’s $16bn (€12.5bn) real estate allocation overseas, notably in Europe and China.
"We’ll continue to see some of that [strategy], though it’s too early to say exactly what will happen," said CalPERS spokesman Brad Pachecho.
Real estate makes up around 7% of the $220bn fund.
