GLOBAL - The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and real estate company Hines have earned a profit of $160m (€113m) from a Brazilian fund that has closed after selling its office, residential and logistics projects in Brazil.

According to CalPERS, the investment in the Hines CalPERS Brazil Fund I generated a 60% internal rate of return.

The fund, which was launched in 2005 with $100m in equity, has secured as much as $95m from CalPERS.

Joseph Dear, chief investment officer at CalPERS, said: "These significant earnings are a credit to the fine work of Hines and an affirmation of our new strategy to deploy up to 15% of our real estate capital to growth markets like Brazil and China."

Hines, which has been operating in Brazil for 13 years, also invests for CalPERS in a second HCB fund and in other global markets, including China.

Ted Eliopoulos, senior investment officer for the CalPERS real estate programme, added: "Brazil is Latin America's largest economy, with increasing earnings, a growing middle class and favourable demand for the development of shopping centres, warehouses, offices and residential units.

"We have an investment strategy in place to take advantage of the opportunities."

The Hines CalPERS Brazil Fund I real estate projects were located in several cities in Brazil, including São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba.

CalPERS unveiled its real estate strategy earlier this year, saying it would focus on core investments with a significantly heavier weighting to its domestic market.

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