PERS committee approves staff recommendation to hire PGIM Quantitative Solutions as global growth equity manager

Staff recommended the Investment Committee of the Public Employees Retirement System of Mississippi contract with PGIM Quantitative Solutions to replace EPIC Investment Advisors as the plan’s global equity tilt manager, and trustees approved the staff recommendation by voice vote on May 20.

The action follows a search the committee authorized in December to identify a replacement for one of the plan’s global equity managers. Staff and consultant Callan screened hundreds of candidates, narrowed the list to seven finalists and recommended a customized PGIM quantitative solution that provides a systematic, growth‑tilted global equity sleeve designed to overweight fast‑growing stocks while controlling sector and country concentrations.

Staff said PGIM’s recommended mandate would be a customized implementation of PGIM’s global all‑country equity process that intentionally overweights “rapid growth” companies by about 20% relative to the plan’s policy benchmark while using risk controls to limit country‑ and sector‑level concentration. Staff and Callan presented performance histories for PGIM’s strategies and explained that a portion of the presented track record was modeled (simulated) to reflect a custom implementation tailored to PERS’s benchmark and target risk budget. PGIM representatives explained that the simulation applied the firm’s live stock‑selection model and portfolio‑construction rules to a custom target and then showed how the rules would have performed historically; PGIM said the simulated results were validated against live strategies that use the same process.

PGIM attendees included Stacy Mintz (head of quantitative equity investment team) and Kevin O’Rourke (client relations). PGIM said the custom mandate would manage roughly $900 million of PERS assets (staff estimate) and proposed a fee of roughly 6 basis points, which staff noted would be a material savings compared with the incumbent arrangement.

After PGIM’s presentation and questions, the committee’s staff moved to contract with PGIM to replace EPIC as the global equity tilt manager; a trustee seconded the motion. The committee called for a voice vote. Chairs and trustees present said “aye”; there were no recorded “no” votes on the transcript. The chair announced, “staff’s recommendation is approved.”

Ending: Staff will finalize contract terms and fees with PGIM and return any required execution documents and an implementation timeline to the Investment Committee and board as part of the normal onboarding process.