Gregory Roth

The San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System, which oversees $16 billion in pension assets, named Art Wang as its new managing director of private markets to oversee investments in private equity, real estate and real assets.

The giant Texas Teachers’ Retirement System committed more than $1.1 billion to private equity across seven investments in the fourth quarter, with some pledges going to long-time partners and some to new relationships.

Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Levine Leichtman Capital Partners is back in the market with its newest flagship fund, Levine Leichtman Capital Partners V LP, which is reportedly targeting $1.5 billion. The mid-market firm is known for making investments in such firms as the Jon Douglas Real Estate Group and Quizno’s, the sandwich franchisor.

With the appointment this month of Michael Bailey as chief of private equity at the $51 billion Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board, most of the top-level vacancies for CIOs and private equity officers at the nation’s biggest pension funds have been filled. How long they’ll stay filled is the big question.

Abbott Capital Management, a New York based fund-of-funds manager, is raising its newest, Abbott Capital Private Equity Investors 2013 LP, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  

Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm that focuses on oil and gas buyouts, closed its sixth fund, Kayne Anderson Energy Fund VI LP, raising $1.6 billion overall and matching the fund’s initial target. The new fund is nearly double the size of its previous effort, the 2009-vintage Fund V, which raised $820 million. Fund VI was “considerably oversubscribed,” according to the firm.

Armed with new legal authority to invest in alternative investments, the $15 billion Georgia Employees’ Retirement System has hired Catharine Burkett and Ben Cahyono to begin investing in alternative investments such as private equity, according to James Potvin, the system’s executive director.

Filling a key position that had been vacant for a year and a half, the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Asset Management Board, the state’s main pension body, named Michael Bailey as its new head of private equity. He will start on Feb. 26. The post was previously held for several years by Wayne Smith, who left in July 2011.