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An Arkansas public pension fund has accused investment manager Allianz Global Investors of "misconduct and gross mismanagement" when it sought to reverse losses by doubling down on a series of bad trades just before the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the U.S. stock market earlier this year.

In a lawsuit filed late Monday in Manhattan federal court, the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System said it had suffered at least $774 million in losses as a result of a "reckless strategy" by Allianz and its parent company that abandoned risk controls on funds meant to weather severe market downturns.

"This strategy—undertaken with the assets of ATRS in the Alpha Funds—was a gamble that the expected market tsunami would turn out to be a drizzle," the pension fund's Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann and Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer attorneys said in the 53-page filing.

"In March 2020, however, as Allianz economists had predicted, investor uncertainty concerning the economic impact of the coronavirus triggered substantial (but hardly unprecedented) market volatility and prompted sharp declines in equity prices—and the Alpha Funds suffered catastrophic losses resulting from the volatility protection they had sold to other investors," the complaint said.

While the market has rebounded in recent months, stocks fell sharply in March, as large swaths of the economic began to shutdown in response to the spread of COVID-19 and market volatility spiked. Later that month, Allianz was forced to liquidate two funds, and analysts downgraded others, including three held by ATRS during the downturn.

The suit is centered on Allianz' so-called Structured Alpha funds, which pursued a "market-neutral" strategy while also selling insurance against large market swings, the suit said. The complaint alleged that Allianz ignored the warnings of its own economists that conditions could worsen and gambled that risky trades would recoup losses it suffered in February.

"While AllianzGI was obligated to have positions in place to protect against losses in the event of a market downturn, in reality, the supposed hedges that AllianzGI executed merely locked in the losses, exacerbating a problem that was already spiraling out of control," the filing said.

In a statement, Allianz disputed the lawsuit's premise as "simply incorrect and without foundation," saying that the Structured Alpha portfolio "did not diverge from their investment strategy."

"Our own analysis has revealed that the portfolio was at all times managed to its alpha targets and in accordance with its design. While the losses suffered in the portfolio are deeply disappointing, there is no basis for legal liability," the company said. "AllianzGI intends to defend itself vigorously against these allegations."

The case, captioned Arkansas Teacher Retirement System v. Aliianz Global Investors, has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla.

The complaint was surfaced by Legal Radar.

The pension fund is represented by Hannah Ross, Avi Josefson, James Harrod and Michael Blatchley of Bernstein Litowitz and Frederic S. Fox, Donald R. Hall, Melinda Cambpell and Aaron Schwartz.

Counsel for Allianz was not listed as of Tuesday afternoon.