Chris Ailman Stepping Down as CalSTRS CIO, Adding to Golden State Pension Vacancies

Chris Ailman plans to exit his longtime role as chief investment officer of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, leaving a second CIO vacancy to fill at one of the Golden State’s massive pension funds.

Ailman is “ready to retire” after working as a public funds CIO for 38 years, he told Bloomberg TV on Thursday. The 65-year-old previously served as CIO of the Sacramento County Employees Retirement System and the Washington State Investment Board before joining CalSTRS in October 2000.

Ailman’s departure, scheduled for the last day of June, sets off a search for a successor at CalSTRS, which manages $318 billion on behalf of public educators in America’s most populous state. Ailman will act as an advisor to the new CIO through the end of the year, according to a LinkedIn post.

“This is well planned out,” he said in the Bloomberg interview. “I’ve been talking to the investment committee for a couple of years about succession planning, so for us this is a plan that we’ll execute and make it pretty smooth.”

CalPERS Search Continues

Ailman’s announcement comes after Nicole Musicco left her post as CIO of the California Public Employees Retirement System last September, with the $463 billion pension fund saying she planned to spend more time with her family in Toronto. Deputy chief investment officer Dan Bienvenue is serving in an interim capacity while CalPERS searches for a new CIO.

Musicco had joined CalPERS in 2022 after an extended search to replace Ben Meng, who left abruptly in August 2020 amid allegations that he ran afoul of rules governing disclosure of personal investments, Bloomberg reported.

At CalSTRS, Ailman led a 200-person investment staff and pushed the fund to ramp up allocations to private equity and real estate. Investments during his tenure included a total of $825 million in commitments to Asia Pacific real estate funds during the first half of 2022, including vehicles backed by PAG, Greystar and Blackstone.

Ailman’s goal upon arrival was to make “a global asset manager” out of CalSTRS, he said Thursday. “I told the board at the time, I really thought they could put more into privates — private equity, private real estate.”

Kim to Start at TMRS

In other pension fund personnel moves, Yup Kim is set to join the Texas Municipal Retirement System next week as chief investment officer after last month’s news that he was leaving his role as head of private equity investments at CalPERS.

Kim succeeds Dave Hunter, who announced his retirement in early November. Before joining CalPERS in 2020, Kim spent four years as a senior portfolio manager at the $80 billion Alaska Permanent Fund, which has grown to become America’s largest sovereign wealth fund by investing the Arctic state’s oil royalties.

In Austin, he takes up chief investment duties for a fund with $35.5 billion in assets managed on behalf of 210,000 municipal employees and retirees in 930 participating Texas cities.