The Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association (LACERA) has ended a real estate separate account relationship with manager Vanbarton Group as a result of underperformance and accounting irregularities.
In a meeting document, LACERA said it appointed Clarion Partners, earlier this year, to manage the $83.5m ($76.5m) separate account portfolio of three shopping centres.
The $58.4bn pension fund’s real estate consultant Townsend Group said Vanbarton has underperformed and as of the first half of last year, had reported a since-inception time-weighted return of -1.3% on a net fee basis.
In the meeting document, Townsend also said Vanbarton revealed in August last year that since mid-2009, Vanbarton had made some errors in reporting the performance and market value information on the assets managed.
LACERA said Vanbarton rectified the accounting irregularity in 2014 which resulted in an overstatement of $62.1m.
