The Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System (LACERS) is hiring CenterSquare Investment Management for a domestic REITs strategy.
The US pension fund has allocated $65m (€55.9m) to the manager after a selection process that began early last year.
Thomas Moutes, general manager for the pension fund, said the company was selected for its organisational ability and strong management team, as well as a “well-articulated investment strategy” consistent with LACERS’s objectives.
The decision to hire the new REIT manager was made on advice from the pension fund’s general consultant, Wilshire Associates.
LACERS received 31 responses from a mixture of US and global strategies, with CenterSquare, Brookfield Investment Management and Duff & Phelps Investment Management Company all finalists.
The planned hiring of CenterSquare, which declined to comment, will be for a long active strategy.
The proposed benchmark for the account is the FTSE NAREIT All Equity index, with a three-year contract starting in April.
LACERS is also planning to commit up to $35m into Morgan Stanley’s open-ended Prime Property Fund.
The fund is the second to approve a commitment to the vehicle of late, following a $40m investment from the Illinois State Board of Investment in December last year.
Prime Property, which has $12.9bn in total gross real estate assets, has a current deposit queue of $1.3bn, expected to be called by the end of this year.
If Morgan Stanley calls capital for the fund at a slower pace, LACERS’s commitment may not be drawn down until 2016.
The fund is targeting a 7-9% net return, focusing on the US office, apartment, industrial and retail sectors, with some exposure to storage facilities.
Leverage of the fund is 22%.
