The chief investment officer of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System is leaving the pension fund.
Ted Eliopoulos, the chief investment officer at CalPERS since September 2014, will leave at the end of the calendar year, according to a release from the organization. A search for his replacement will begin immediately. A CalPERS spokesperson did not return a phone call seeking more details on the resignation.
“With two daughters in college, and one with health considerations that require my wife and me to be within reasonable distance, we have decided to relocate to New York City where they both will be in school,” Eliopoulos said in a statement. “Due to this fact, I will be stepping away from CalPERS by the beginning of 2019.”
Eliopoulos, formerly a real estate lawyer, started working at CalPERS in 2007 as the head of its real estate division. He began serving as acting CIO in 2013 while then-CIO Joseph Dear was undergoing cancer treatment, and took over the role in September 2014 following Dear’s death.
Eliopoulos executed CalPERS’ move away from hedge funds, which began just before his role as CIO was made official in 2014. Eliopoulos has also been looking for ways to make private equity more transparent.
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In addition to working at CalPERS, Eliopoulos serves on boards at the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board’s Investor Advisory Group and is on the Alliance for Southern California Innovation’s Advisory Council, according to the CalPERS website.
Eliopoulos’ move is not the first high profile departure from the fund this year: Earlier in 2018, CalPERS hired a new chief operating investment officer following the departure of Wylie Tollette, who left the fund in January to return to a post at Franklin Templeton Investments, where he worked for nearly two decades.
Swiss pension executive Elisabeth Bourqui – previously head of pension assets and liabilities management at automation company ABB Group – took over Tollette’s COIO role.
