GAM, the $26.8 billion fund of hedge fund manager, has been hired by South Carolina Retirement System to manage a $750 million allocation to its GAM Diversity strategy.

Diversity is a $10 billion globally diversified, multi-strategy fund of hedge funds that includes between 60 to 80 underlying managers. The portfolio is split between equity and arbitrage strategies.

“South Carolina has made a fairly large entry into reallocating their assets so for the first time they’re beginning to work extensively with outside managers,” said Joe Gieger, a managing director at GAM.

South Carolina’s portfolio has undergone drastic changes since legislation was passed last year allowing the system to invest in alternatives. The system has allocated 30% of its $30 billion to alternatives, with 15% of assets going toward portable alpha strategies, 5% to private equity, 5% to real estate and 5% to global asset allocation strategies.

The system has reportedly hired about a dozen absolute-return managers, allocating some $4.5 billion to hedge funds of funds and multi-strategy hedge fund strategies, with another $1.5 billion split among four managers in directional hedge fund strategies.