TCRS Private equity investment jumps with $50MM placement

The Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System has made a $50 million private-equity investment commitment to Oaktree PPIP Private Fund.

The announcement brings to $225 million TCRS assets committed to private-equity investments during the first full year of private-equity operations under Private Equity Director Lamar Villere (at right).

Los Angeles-based Oaktree is multinational and strategically diversified in debt, convertibles, private equity and real estate.  Oaktree has about $73 billion in assets under management, across all lines.  Oaktree's own Class A units trade as “OAKTRZ” on the Goldman Sachs Tradable Unregistered Equities over-the-counter marketplace (the “GSTrUE OTC market”).

Allocations previously announced in August and November 2009 included:

•    Hellman & Friedman Capital Partners VII LP, San Francisco, up to $75 million.
•    TA XI of Boston may call for up to $50 million in capital from TCRS.
•    Khosla Venture III of Menlo Park may call for up to $25 million.
•    Draper Fisher Jurvetson Fund X LP, Menlo Park, up to $25 million.

In the first year of its efforts, still underway, the TCRS Investment Committee and Villere have been working to allocate to private-equity investment fund managers roughly $300 million of TCRS's total assets, which were $29.4 billion, as of Dec. 29, 2009.

By law, TCRS may allocate more than $850 million to private equity in the 2009-12 timeframe, based on TCRS's current valuation of retirement plan assets.  The new investment program was authorized by the General Assembly and was signed into law by Gov. Phil Bredesen, in June 2009.

Villere's appointment was announced a year ago.  He was recruited from a similar post with the then-$39.7 billion Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois (TRS), where he oversaw both the private-equity and absolute-return portfolios. ♦