The $7.6 billion Louisiana State Employees’ Retirement System’s (LASERS) investment committee met last Thursday to discuss The TCW Group’s organizational changes.
LASERS CIO Bobby Beale told Investment Management Weekly that the retirement system’s investment committee discussed the management transformation and personnel departures at the Los Angeles-based firm during its Dec. 17 meeting. He said that no specific actions or asset allocation changes were issued.
Currently, TCW manages $500 million for the system in two mortgage portfolios, Beale said.
As reported previously in Investment Management Weekly, Jeffrey Gundlach, previous former TCW high-yield fixed income CIO and portfolio manager, was terminated on Dec. 4. Roughly 10 days later, Gundlach announced that he would form his own fixed-income investment management firm DoubleLine.
Effectively, since the announcement, more than 40 people have left TCW for the new money manager, including Philip Barach, former TCW managing director of the MBS group, and Ronald Redell, previous president and CEO of the TCW funds and the TCW strategic income fund, a DoubleLine press release said.
Investment Concern
The system CIO said Dec. 21 that the staff moves have sparked an interest by the investment staff at the Baton Rouge, La.-based retirement plan. Beale said that the domestic bond manager has had oversight of the mortgage portfolios for more than 15-years.
“Obviously, the Gundlach move along with a number of professionals leaving who were managing our portfolios has initiated discussion regarding this,” Beale said in the email.
Beale stated that the 100,000-member system will “thoroughly review the situation and discuss” it further at its Jan. 23 Board of Trustees meeting.
