Longtime LP at Texas Teachers’, Thawley, moves to UTIMCO

Brad Thawley, a longtime PE-investment officer with Teacher Retirement System of Texas, joined UTIMCO on the private-markets team at the start of the year, according to sources.

Thawley left Texas Teachers’ around year-end as a senior investment director. He worked at Texas Teachers’ since 2005, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The profile has been updated with Thawley’s new post, senior director at University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Co.

At Buyouts Insider’s PartnerConnect LP-GP Outlook conference on Jan. 22, Thawley said he would focus on middle-market and large-cap private equity, something the endowment previously did not focus on as much.

“UTIMCO has been historically very good at investing in smaller managers,” he said, speaking on a panel at the event.

With about $150 billion in assets, Texas Teachers’ has not yet recruited a successor to Thawley but does plan to fill the vacancy, a spokesman for the pension system said.

The system, with a 13 percent target allocation to PE, has 13 investment professionals on the PE team.

UTIMCO, with about $44.6 billion in AUM, last year hired the former private equity chief at Harvard Management, Rich Hall, as deputy CIO.

UTIMCO’s PE team includes nine investment professionals, a spokesman said. 

Update: This report has been updated with additional information about UTIMCO’s private equity team. 

Action Item: Read more about Texas Teachers here: https://bit.ly/2UFfCdL