The San Diego County Employees Retirement Association (SDCERA) has hired an assistant CIO from the city’s pension fund, furthering the buildout of an internal team.
Thomas Williams joins a senior staff that’s entirely new from a year prior, when SDCERA terminated its outsourced-CIO Salient Partners.
Williams has a 12-year track record in public funds. He led fixed income for Arizona’s state system (2004 to 2007), and has served since then as a portfolio manager for the San Diego City Treasurer’s $2 billion pooled fund.
SDCERA conducted “a comprehensive, nationwide search” to fill the assistant CIO position, according to its Wednesday announcement.
Over the last 12 months, the $10 billion fund hired in-house CIO Stephen Sexauer, its former consultant David Wescoe as CEO, and replaced its chief legal officer and CFO.
This team marks SDCERA’s return to a traditional public fund investment and governance structure, following a fraught six-year foray into outsourcing and risk parity.
“It’s been difficult for the organization over the last six months,” then-Trustee David Moore said in January 2015, during a contentious board debate on strategy. “No event has occurred over this period of time with the [risk parity] program that has forced us to change our mind. And yet, for whatever reason, we’re changing directions because we got spooked.”
Board Chair Skip Murphy, in contrast, later characterized this direction change as a “philosophical shift to return to an in-house investment management program.”
Assistant CIO Williams begins work on May 27.