USS, the UK's largest private pension scheme, has hired Robert Ross from the California State Teachers' Retirement System to lead its private equity programme, according to Bloomberg sources.

He succeeds Geoffrey Geiger, a well-known figure in European private equity circles, who retired last year. Ross spent more than a decade at Cal STRS, one of the largest public pension funds in the US, most recently as a senior portfolio manager working on private equity, including emerging manager strategies, and earlier in his career at TIAA-CREF.

The scheme runs roughly 68% of its assets in-house through USS Investment Management, an approach that independent benchmarking suggests saves it around £102m ($139m) a year against comparable global funds. Its Private Markets Group, a team of nearly 80 people, oversees around £26bn ($35bn) across four areas: private equity and co-investment, direct private equity focused on infrastructure, private credit and alternative income, and property. About 70% of that is invested directly, with the team originating, executing, managing, and exiting deals itself.

Ross will take charge of the private equity funds and co-investment book, the part of the portfolio that commits to external buyout and growth managers and invests alongside them. USS has swung from crisis to strength, moving from a deficit of more than £14bn in 2020, and years of bitter disputes with academics over benefit cuts and strikes, to an estimated surplus of £16.9bn ($23bn) and a funding level of 127% in its provisional 2026 valuation, with total assets of about £84bn ($115bn). That improvement, driven by strong performance from its growth assets, gives the scheme both the confidence and the capacity to keep leaning into private markets rather than retreating into liability matching.