US - The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) has booked losses of $250m (€193.7m) from the sale of share in a US housing joint venture to a Japanese developer.
The $294bn pension scheme sold its share in 28 largely unbuilt housing developments originated with joint venture partner Newland Real Estate in order to restructure its real estate portfolio away from residential into multi-family housing, shopping centres and office.
A spokesman for the scheme said was in line with a strategy set out in February last year.
"This is not a comment on the housing market," he said. "It's specifically a CalPERS investment decision."
He added: "The plan calls for real estate to be a diversifier - to have a low correlation to the public and private equity portions of our portfolio, to provide stable cash yields and to act as a partial inflation hedge."
Under its five-year plan, CalPERS will wind down its $6.8bn legacy portfolio and develop an estimated $8.6bn new portfolio, which will focus primarily on its domestic market, with around 10% exposure to BRIC markets, Western Europe and Japan.
At least 75% of the new portfolio will be allocated to core assets.
The overall return target is 7%.
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