NYC appoints former white house PE expert as CIO

In his new position, Doñe will provide direct investment advice to the five New York City retirement systems: Teachers' Retirement System of the City of New York (TRS), New York City Employees' Retirement System (NYCERS), New York City Police Pension Fund (Police), New York City Fire Pension Fund (Fire), and New York City Board of Education Retirement System (BERS). The total assets under management of the five pension funds together aggregate to over $200bn.

While not directly serving as the pensions' CIO, "the funds do not have their own CIOs – they delegate that role to BAM as their investment adviser. So in that effect, Alex is the CIO for the NYC retirement systems", a person familiar told Unquote sister publication Inframation.

Doñe has served as interim CIO since July 2018, and before that as deputy CIO for the comptroller's private markets division, head of private equity, and executive director of private equity. Immediately prior to joining BAM, Doñe served for two years in Barack Obama's administration as a presidential appointee at the US Department of Commerce – Minority Business Development Agency.

Doñe's prior position as head of private equity overseeing the $12bn portfolio at BAM was recently filled by David Enriquez, who had served at the organisation since 2016.

During his tenure as deputy CIO, Doñe participated in several initiatives to employ new levels of diversification in the bureau's portfolio, including a search for an investment manager to source and invest in first-time funds and early-stage firms managed by emerging managers across several asset classes.

The five retirement systems' total portfolio annualised gross returns aggregated to 8.78% (three-year), 8.69% (five-year), 7.08% (10-year), and 7.86% (15-year), according to a report prepared by State Street, the investor's investment consultant. Each of the five pension funds has its own board of trustees, and they also have different consultants advising them depending on the asset class. StepStone Group has been advising NYCERS, Police and Fire for their investments in private equity, and Hamilton Lane is the investment consultant for TRS.

Doñe replaces former CIO Scott Evans, who departed the institution on June 28 after serving the position since July 2014. Reasons for his departure were not provided.

BAM has also recently appointed David Enriquez as head of private equity, in a bid to oversee the private equity portfolio of the five NYC pension systems. Among them, NYCERS and Fire have invested larger portions of their portfolio in PE, amounting to 6.9% and 6.7% respectively. The current allocation to PE as of August 2018 is 6.1% for Police, 5.8% for BERS, and 5.3% for TRS.

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