REAL ESTATE – The Kansas Public Employees Retirement System has added to its real estate portfolio with commitments to international investing totaling $175m (€130.9m).
The pension fund allocated a total of $140m into global REITs. This was accomplished by investing $70m each into two entities. These were the AEW Global Securities Fund and Morgan Stanley Investment Fund Real Estate Portfolio.
AEW Capital Management is the real estate manager on the Global Securities Fund. This is structured as an open-ended commingled.
The real estate manager looks at buying publicly traded securities in companies around the world. The markets that it’s looking are Europe, Asia Pacific and North America.
The Global Securities Fund will be making investments in companies that own or manage traditional real estate. These would include property types like office buildings, shopping centers, industrial properties and apartments.
Morgan Stanley Real Estate is the manager of the Morgan Stanley Investment Fund Real Estate Portfolio.
Kansas PERS approved an investment of $35m into the JER Europe Fund III. This is a commingled fund that is managed by JER Partners. This entity is the third commingled in Europe that the manager has sponsored. The first two commingled funds raised a total of $251m euros.
JER Partners in Europe looks for transactions in a variety of markets. These would include the EU member states, Norway and Sweden. The real estate manager focuses on areas where property fundamentals are strong, it has good relationships with strong operating partners and believes it faces limited competition from other bidders.
JER Partners considers a wide range of transactions in Europe. Some might be public to private deals. Another possibility are corporate and government divestitures. It will consider some niche property types. Examples of this might be hotels, nursing homes and senior or student housing. Development deals will be looked at on a limited basis.
