Belmont's Trotsky To Run State's Main Pension Fund

Belmont's Michael Trotsky, the current director of the Massachusetts Health Care Security Trust, was selected today, Aug. 3, to head the main state employee pension fund.

After a unanimous vote by the nine-member pension fund's board of directors, chaired by Massachusetts Treasurer Tim Cahill, the 46-year-old Somerset Street resident was appointed executive director of the $41 billion Pension Reserves Investment Trust.

Trotsky will manage the investment strategy of the retirement fund that serves 300,000 government workers and teachers in addition to 90 municipal and regional retirement funds.

Trotsky comes to the PRIT fund after serving for little more than a year at the $325 million Health Care Security Trust Fund, where he was a liaison to the PRIT fund.

Trotsky succeeds former state legislature and East Boston resident Michael Travaglini as executive director.

A 1990 University of Pennsylvania business school graduate joins the trust after the fund's wild two-year roller coaster ride. Hit hard by the global collapse in the markets, the PRIT lost a record 24 percent of asset value in fiscal 2009 only to see a nearly 13 percent gain – resulting in a $3.6 billion increase in assets – in fiscal '10.

The fund remains off of its all-time high of $54 billion in assets.

According to state officials, last fiscal year's growth was due to an investment strategy of moving into fixed-income investments, which rose 33 percent, and private equity funds, that grew 18 percent.

A veteran investment strategist, Trotsky spent five years as a portfolio manager focusing on the semiconductor industry for Boston's Par Capital Management Inc.

From 1998 to 2002, Trotsky oversaw investments for Greenburg Summit Partners in Boston, and from 1991 to 1998 was an analyst and portfolio manager for Independence Investment Associates.

His only business experience outside of investment firms were five years in sales at Intel Corp. in Santa Clara, CA