CBRE Global Investors has tapped Dominic Garcia to the newly created position of chief pension investment strategist. Garcia joins the real asset investment manager from the Public Employees Retirement Association of New Mexico (PERA), where he worked for eight years—the last four as its chief investment officer.
At PERA, Garcia worked with stakeholders on enhancing the sustainability of the plan. He also established a risk budget, delegated investment authority to staff members, and created a risk-based approach to portfolio management.
Before joining the New Mexico PERA, Garcia was a senior funds alpha manager at the $144 billion State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), where he managed and oversaw the public market external active risk profile for global equities, global fixed income, multi-asset, and hedge funds, and was on the investment committee. At SWIB, Garcia worked under his mentor, CIO David Villa, who died in February.
Garcia’s new role will focus on developing solutions for pension funds that want to expand their infrastructure investments. A flood of money is expected to come into infrastructure projects over the coming years as President Joe Biden tries to pass an infrastructure plan that will invest an estimated $2 trillion this decade.
“Pension funds are increasingly interested in infrastructure due to the predictability of cashflows and non-cyclical characteristics of the assets,” Stephen Dowd, CIO of private infrastructure strategies for CBRE Global Investors, said in a statement. “This new role underscores the strategic importance of infrastructure to our investors’ portfolios and our platform. We are excited to leverage Dominic’s investment expertise to help deliver these solutions to our investors.”
Garcia was named to CIO magazine’s 2021 Power 100 list earlier this year. He and his executive team were recognized for collaborating with stakeholders to improve long-term pension sustainability by modernizing investment governance and enacting pension reform. Garcia also integrated a risk-based approach that separates alpha and beta in the multi-asset investment portfolio.
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