TJ Carlson Hired as Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System’s New CIO

He will replace Shannon Davidson, who will retire in November after 25 years at MOSERS.

Art by Chris Buzelli


The $9 billion Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System (MOSERS) said that after conducting a national search of more than 100 candidates, it has hired TJ Carlson as its new chief investment officer effective Oct. 1.

Carlson will succeed Shannon Davidson, who is retiring Nov. 1 after being CIO for less than two years. He’s worked at MOSERS for over a quarter of a century.

“We look forward to TJ joining the MOSERS team and believe his vast experience in the public pension arena will build on the success of MOSERS’ strong investment program,” Ronda Stegmann, executive director of MOSERS, said in a statement.

Carlson will join MOSERS from the Texas Municipal Retirement System (TMRS) after nearly eight years as CIO, during which time he helped the pension fund grow to $34.5 billion in assets from $23.8 billion. His last day at TMRS will be Sept. 7.

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“TJ is an experienced and talented investment professional,” TMRS Executive Director David Wescoe said in a statement. “During his seven-plus years with TMRS, TJ’s many accomplishments include building a first-rate investment team.”

Prior to TMRS, Carlson was CIO at the Kentucky Retirement Systems (KRS) for a little over three years, and before that was a primary consultant at investment consulting firm Ennis Knupp. He also served as an infantry sergeant and squad leader in the US Marine Corps and Reserves. He earned a Master of Business Administration from Drake University and a bachelor’s in mass communications from Grand View College.

In 2019 Carlson was named to Chief Investment Officer magazine’s “Power 100” list, in part for transforming TMRS from a 60/40 indexed portfolio with a staff of six to a team of two dozen with members that focused on each asset class. In a 2019 interview with CIO, Carlson said he believed that the only way to earn the pension fund’s 6.75% discount rate was by getting away from traditional equity and fixed income as much as possible. He was named to the list again in 2021.

“Our investment strategy is to be highly diversified and non-siloed with a strong component of private market exposures,” Carlson said in 2019.

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SEC Mulls New Sustainable Fund Disclosure Rules

The regulator’s chief says he’s concerned about the greenwashing of ESG investments.


The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is mulling over whether to issue rules
that would require so-called “sustainable” fund managers to disclose the criteria and underlying data they use when making investment decisions.

The regulator’s Asset Management Advisory Committee (AMAC) held a panel discussion last week to discuss environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and the asset management industry. SEC Chair Gary Gensler indicated at the meeting that he was concerned about “greenwashing” by asset managers. Greenwashing is a deceptive tactic in which investors are misled into believing an investment vehicle is ESG-friendly or sustainable based on terms used to describe or name the investment.

“The basic idea is truth in advertising. We’ve seen a growing number of funds market themselves as ‘green,’ ‘sustainable,’ ‘low-carbon,’ and so on,” Gensler said in prepared remarks before the committee. “When it comes to sustainability-related investing, though, there’s currently a huge range of what asset managers might mean by certain terms or what criteria they use.”

Gensler cited estimates that there are at least 800 registered investment companies with more than $3 trillion in ESG assets last year. “What information stands behind those claims that a fund is ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’?” he said, adding that “investors should be able to drill down to see what’s under the hood of these funds.”

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The AMAC was also presented with a report that included recommendations from its subcommittee on diversity and inclusion. The report said the evidence is clear that investment performance by diverse asset managers is equal to or greater than the performance of companies that lack diversity in ownership and senior leadership.

 The report also said that artificial barriers, such as the size of assets under management and length of track record, “have been constructed that, when applied dispositively, directly and indirectly exclude women and people of color from the opportunity to compete within the industry.” The report added that “peer-reviewed academic research indicates that diversity in life experiences is additive to investment performance.”

The establishment of ESG disclosure rules was supported by the majority of SEC commissioners attending the meeting, including Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, who said the SEC has “a role to play in promoting diversity and inclusion in the asset management industry.”

However, Commissioner Hester Peirce, referring to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), urged the committee in prepared remarks “to think further about how differences between financial reporting and ESG reporting could make a FASB-like standard-setting entity for ESG unworkable and imprudent, even in the longer term.”

Earlier this month Peirce said in a statement that she objected to the International Financial Reporting Standards’ proposal to create an international sustainability standards board, saying that doing so would “improperly equate sustainability standards with financial reporting standards,” and “raise serious governance concerns.”

Related Stories:

SEC Launches Climate, ESG Enforcement Task Force

Sustainable Investment Legislation Re-Introduced in Congress

SEC Recommends Creating Disclosure Framework for ESG Investments

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