Fund-of-funds firm Pacific Alternative Asset Management Company has launched a joint venture with the Employees Retirement System of Texas. The goal: Seed and support emerging hedge fund managers.
The venture – a co-investment platform called PAAMCO Launchpad – is seeking to raise $3 billion in assets to help emerging managers with strong growth potential to professionalize and grow their firms, according to a statement. The effort will build on ERS’s existing $1 billion emerging manager program as well as PAAMCO’s expertise in the sector.
Andrew Gitlin will serve as chief executive of the platform. Gitlin has built and launched several alternative investment businesses over the course of a 30-year career and was among the first to introduce a manger seeding program in 1992, according to the announcement. Panayiotis Lambropoulos, a portfolio manager at ERS, is leading ERS’s efforts in the joint venture and will be responsible for identifying and reviewing potential investments.
“PAAMCO Launchpad is thrilled to enter the seeding business with a partner as important, experienced and serious about this opportunity as ERS is,” said Gitlin in the announcement. “We believe PAAMCO Launchpad offers an intriguing value proposition that can unlock the potentially superior performance and private equity-like benefits embedded in early-stage hedge fund investing.”
PAAMCO, based in Irvine, California, merged with KKR’s Prisma division last year to form PAAMCO Prisma Holdings, which had $30 billion under management or advisement at the end of the first quarter.
