The UK’s Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) has appointed Robert Ross, a senior private equity investment manager at the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), to oversee its private equity portfolio, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Ross will join USS in September and take on the newly vacant role of head of private equity funds and co-investments at USS Investment Management, the pension scheme’s principal investment adviser. He will report to Ben Levenstein, head of private markets.
He succeeds Geoffrey Geiger, who retired last year.
Ross has spent more than a decade at CalSTRS and is currently listed as a senior portfolio manager at the US pension fund. His responsibilities have included private equity investments, including work on emerging manager strategies.
The appointment comes as USS continues to build out its private markets capabilities. The pension scheme manages about £84bn ($115bn) and has approximately one-third of its assets invested across private markets, according to the organisation.
Ross’s move brings experience from one of the world’s largest institutional private equity investors to one of the UK’s biggest pension schemes, strengthening USS’s in-house expertise as institutional investors continue to refine their allocations to private markets.
Ross will be responsible for both fund investments and co-investments, giving him a broad remit across the pension scheme’s private equity programme.
