The $382.4B California State Teachers’ Retirement System has appointed Puneet Kohli as investment director of risk-mitigating strategies (RMS).
Scott Chan, the pension fund’s chief investment officer, announced Kohli’s appointment earlier today during its November 12 board meeting, noting he will report directly to Geraldine Jimenez, CalSTRS’ senior investment director of public markets. Kohli replaces replaces Steven Tong, who retired earlier this year after serving with CalSTRS for more than 40 years.
Kohli brings more than 25 years of experience in investing, trading and leading investment teams for both public pension plans and major private-sector banks, noted a press release. He joins CalSTRS from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan — a Canadian “Maple Eight” pension fund — where he spent nearly three years serving as a senior managing director. According to his LinkedIn profile, at OTPP, he led the external managers group, driving growth and concentration of the external managers platform to support both capital markets and total fund objectives.
Prior to his role at Ontario Teachers’, he spent nearly a decade at the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, also a Canadian Maple Eight, serving as assistant vice-president of fixed income and derivatives. Earlier in his career, he served as vice-president of equity derivatives at the Bank of Montreal and a portfolio manager at the National Bank of Canada.
In his new role, Kohli will oversee allocation across CalSTRS’ RMS investments, partner with global managers with a long-term focus and help build internally managed RMS strategies with colleagues from the Global Equity and Fixed Income teams. He began his new role on November 5.
“As you know, RMS is going to continue to focus on preserving capital, delivering positive returns and being uncorrelated on behalf of the total fund and hopefully providing more resilience to the total portfolio,” said Chan, during the board meeting.
“I’m really excited for [Kohli] to join us. I think he’s going to help us lead several initiatives: no. 1, the collaborative model within RMS — he’ll be working with other public markets directors on incubating internal strategies; no. 2, leveraging some of our alternative managers to contribute to our [total portfolio approach (TPA)], or CalSTRS’ one-fund approach; [and] then working with the RMS team to focus on and find us more and more uncorrelated strategies.”
According to the news release, CalSTRS developed its RMS portfolio after the 2008 global economic recession to preserve capital and deliver positive returns by reducing downside risks and volatility across the investment portfolio.
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