Dear Investment Colleagues:
I am pleased to invite you to attend the Office of the State Comptroller's Fifth Annual Emerging Manager Roundtable, which I will be hosting on Friday, February 17, 2012, from 9:45 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in our offices at 110 State Street, Albany, New York.
As State Comptroller, I am the trustee of the $146.5 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund (CRF), a well-diversified fund managed for the benefit of over one million members and pensioners of the New York State & Local Retirement System. I am proud to say CRF has been recognized as one of the best-funded public pension systems in the nation. We established our Emerging Manager initiative to enable the CRF to tap into a previously underutilized pool of talent in the investment field, including minority-and women-owned firms as well as relatively new and small investment managers. Since the inception of the program, we have established many productive relationships with emerging managers and look forward to continuing to strengthen and diversify our portfolio by encouraging innovation and fresh thinking.
As in years past, this year’s Roundtable will include workshops that focus on private equity firms, real estate, hedge funds and public equity funds. We will be highlighting the work we have done to encourage the development of emerging managers, while also outlining what we see as the next chapter in the evolution of our initiative. Following last year’s successful experiment, we will again be having a speed-networking session that will give prospective managers an opportunity to present their products and services directly to a staff member or consultant.
I hope you will be able to attend this year's event. Our interim CIO Marjorie Tsang, our investment team and I look forward to seeing you in Albany.
Sincerely,
Thomas P. DiNapoli
State Comptroller