DENMARK - Kresten Dahl Juelner and Mads Rude’s move from the real estate department of pension fund ATP to Sparinvest Property Investors is about to bear fruit for the boutique investment manager.

The partners will soon announce the first closing of their global real estate fund-of-funds which they began marketing earlier this autumn.

The closing is scheduled for just before or just after New Year by which time €200m will have been raised exclusively from the institutional marketplace.

The eventual size of the fund will be €400m but Dahl Jeulner said they had not yet decided on timings for future rounds of financing.

The Sparinvest global real estate fund-of-funds will target private funds in Asia, Europe and North America. It will invest in both closed-ended and open-ended funds with a core-plus strategy (enabling a range of investments from core to opportunistic but with a bias towards core and value-added).

At Sparinvest Dahl Jeulner and Rude have been joined by managing partner Bo W Jensen. He moved across from Danish life assurance company Danica Pension where he was chief investment officer.

Dahl Juelner said that he and Rude moved to Sparinvest “to be able to set up a new venture and to have more control over our professional lives”.

Real estate investment is a new line for Sparinvest which is better known for its management of global equity funds (it has won a top-performing fund rating from Standard & Poor’s) and bond portfolios.