Help wanted: savvy money manager

The State Board of Administration is inviting bids for the job of managing its money market funds. It's all part of the strategy to rebuild confidence in the SBA's Local Government Investment Pool, which barely survived a run on the fund last month. Companies that apply for the job must have at least five years experience running a AAAm-rated prime institutional money market fund with at least $10-billion in assets under management. The company also will need to show at least five years of returns for its money funds. The main objective is to find a manager for the local government fund, which now has about $9.8-billion in its high-quality "A fund" and about $2-billion in its troubled "B fund." However, the state says it also will consider adding on contracts to manage other SBA-managed funds. These include the cash assets in the Florida Retirement System (about $1-billion), the Hurricane CAT Fund (about $8-billion), the Citizens Property Insurance fund (about $5-billion) and another money market fund (about $500-million.) Taking all that on will require a big company because the SBA says it wants its funds to be less than 20 percent of the assets the company is managing.