REAL ESTATE – Major European and US pension funds have invested $700m (€554m) in Prudential Real Estate Investors (PREI)’s PRECO III closed-end real estate opportunity fund.
Investors in the global fund include unnamed Irish and Dutch pension funds, a UK charitable trust, three US corporate pension funds and “a major US public pension fund”, according to Theresa Miller, a PREI spokeswoman.
Prudential’s global merchant banking team, which manages the fund, has already made several US acquisitions, including residential and healthcare facilities, via local partners.
In Western Europe, its strategy has been to accumulate real estate assets by acquiring the companies that own them. But Miller said the fund had not ruled out further “entity-level” investments.
“It’s an opportunities fund so any opportunity could be interesting,” she said.
PREI is looking to transfer its experience with trends that are already well advanced in the US and which are now emerging in Europe, including assisted living developments. It has already invested in a Spanish self-storage company, Blue, after first experimenting with the US and UK self-storage markets.
PREI manages $30.6bn of assets for 300 clients.
