REAL ESTATE – The Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana has allocated a total $600m (€503m) to three open-ended core commingled fund real estate managers.

Each of these managers will receive a $200m commitment. They are Pramerica Real Estate Investors (for the Prudential Real Estate Separate Account), JP Morgan Fleming Asset Management (for the Strategic Property Fund) and UBS Realty Investors (for the Real Estate Separate Account fund).

Louisiana Teachers had considered two other managers for the fund search. These were Clarion Partners for its Lion Property Fund and Principal Real Estate Investors for its US Property Account.

The fund’s chief investment officer Dan Bryant said: "We were looking to achieve more diversity with our real estate portfolio and within our total portfolio. We had already made some commitments in the value/added and opportunistic area."

Louisiana Teachers has invested in three commingled funds in the non-core area. One of these was a recent $50m commitment to the Blackstone Real Estate Fund V.

The scheme has also committed to funds managed by Starwood Capital Group and Rockpoint Group.

Louisiana Teachers knows that the commitments to the core funds will not be deployed for a while. Bryant said: "We accept the fact that our commitments will not be put into these funds for four to six quarters because of the queues that these funds have."

Louisiana Teachers has total assets of $13.7bn. It has a planned 4% allocation for core real estate which it is now close to achieving. It has a 5% allocation for value-added/opportunistic and is currently just under this allocation.