The $72bn Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board (MassPrim) has made its debut direct emerging hedge fund manager allocations, deploying $150m across three firms.

Alcova Asset Management, CKC Capital and Global Sigma are equally splitting the mandate, confirmed Eric Nierenberg, chief strategy officer at the Boston-based pension fund.

Emerging managers are defined by MassPrim as firms with $500m or less in assets.

London-based quant Alcova Asset Management was founded in 2012 by former Goldman Sachs prop trader George Assaly.

New York-based CKC Capital trades a credit opportunity strategy. It was established in 2013 by Kevin Baer and Chris Yanney.

Global Sigma is a CTA based in Boca Raton, Florida, founded in 2009 by former Millennium Management and SAC Capital options trader Hanming Rao.

MassPrim, which has an allocation to hedge funds that totals $7.2bn, had previously invested in some emerging hedge fund managers through Paamco.

Last year it decided to set up a dedicated internal portfolio to focus on emerging managers running global macro and CTA strategies.

MassPrim appointed NewAlpha Asset Management as its advisor, while Innocap was chosen to provide managed account platform services.

Specific strategy types to be included in the programme include discretionary macro, systematic macro, CTA and relative value.

According to MassPrim meeting documents, the pension believes that emerging mangers tend to outperform their large peers and that the defensive nature of global macro strategies could help improve the return/risk profile of the pension fund.

Alcova, Global Sigma win first MassPrim emerging manager tickets on HFM InvestHedge.