SFERS Portfolio Update

This week, we’ll take a look at the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System (SFERS)’s portfolio. The pension is led by CEO and CIO Alison Romano, who has served in the dual role since joining SFERS in 2022. She previously spent more than 13 years at the State Board of Administration of Florida, most recently serving as deputy CIO, and earlier in her career spent seven years at Goldman Sachs.

SFERS maintains an AUM of just over $40 billion as of April 30^th, with more than half of its portfolio made up of public and private equity investments.

The pension’s portfolio has generated an average annualized return of 9% over the past three years and 9.6% so far this fiscal year, with public equity outperforming SFERS’ preferred benchmarks over both timeframes.

Below we dig into SFERS’ extensive public disclosures to highlight managers and trends across several asset classes, which users can see for themselves on OWL’s allocator docs page for SFERS, with many more allocators’ documents coming soon.

In Friday’s newsletter, users received a list of some of SFERS’ largest private equity and venture capital managers according to documents received through FOIA requests. In those same documents, SFERS also discloses fund-level performance data alongside its private fund investments. Below are some of its current private holdings with the highest Net IRR as of 6/30/25:

As of 12/31/25, SFERS public equity portfolio was valued at $12 billion and provided $855 million of liquidity during the calendar year. The pension highlights that it has improved the asset class’s diversification in recent years to include more global exposure on top of existing US, developing, and emerging markets exposures.

In Friday’s newsletter, users also received a list of SFERS’ top public managers and each investment’s performance in 2025. Within its public equity portfolio, SFERS points to healthcare (driven by Biotech) as the largest sector contributor to its performance in 2025, with industrials, IT, consumer discretionary, and real estate also helping. SFERS’ Biotech managers include Orbimed, RTW, and Logos.

Below is a chart showing each sector’s average active weight and contribution to the portfolio’s performance in 2025, relative to the MSCI ACWI IMI:

As a side note, the pension is currently hiring for a managing director to lead its public markets strategy following the departure of longtime managing director Kurt Braitberg last Fall. 

SFERS’ latest absolute return breakdown shows that the asset class is valued at $3.9 billion as of 3/31/26. The absolute return strategy is led by managing director David Francl, a 10-year veteran of SFERS and former director of the hedge fund portfolio at Intel’s retirement plan.

The pension first approved an allocation to an absolute return strategy in early 2015, and for the first two years the portfolio was managed in partnership with Blackstone. In 2017 the board approved a 15% allocation to absolute return and SFERS began mixing in direct exposure to the asset class, though the board decreased its allocation to 10% in November 2020.

As of Q1 2026, the direct exposure managed by SFERS makes up 66% of its total absolute return portfolio, while the partnership with Blackstone makes up the remaining 34 percent.

The portfolio is broken down into six primary sub-strategies: equity, credit, macro, quantitative, multi-strategy, and special situations/other. Quant strategies have driven recent performance:

Below is a select group of some of SFERS’ recently completed fund investments, as disclosed in board documents:

SFERS also disclosed one investment termination this year - the pension redeemed its investment in the Baxter Street strategy from Select Equity Group, which as of 12/31/25 had a value of $276 million according to SFERS holdings documents.

The data above (and much more) is included in SFERS Docs tab on OWL. This recently-launched feature allows users to easily access publicly available materials across our allocator database.

OWL is an intelligence platform built for allocators, by allocators. Leading endowments, foundations, and family offices use the system to find, monitor, and connect with thousands of fund managers globally. OWL's analytics engine has collected over one billion data points from 65 countries. We make it easy for allocators to find and track information about the managers they care about – not just positions but also performance analytics, people data, business information, and details about the manager investments of other allocators.

Returns represent the return on invested capital of publicly disclosed long positions, as calculated by OWL. Actual returns may vary based on a number of factors, including (but not limited to) undisclosed positions, short exposure, non-equity holdings, cash holdings, and lagged disclosure of positions.

This newsletter and the material on the Old Well Labs platform are for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, manager, or strategy. Certain investment managers, funds, or limited partners (“LPs”) referenced herein may be current or prospective clients of Old Well Labs, and Old Well Labs may have business relationships with such parties. Accordingly, references to any manager, fund, or LP should not be construed as an endorsement, recommendation, or solicitation. Old Well Labs shall not be liable for any investment gain or loss that may occur from the use of this material. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or used in any publication without express written permission from Old Well Labs.