NORTH AMERICA – The Teacher Retirement System of Texas has approved real estate and infrastructure commitments worth a combined $550m ($421m).
One of the real estate commitments was for $200m to be invested into Ranger Co-Investment Fund III, an investment partnership with Texas Teachers and LaSalle Investment Management.
The investment strategy is to place capital into real estate through co-investments on an opportunistic basis.
LaSalle is looking to achieve several layers of diversification for Fund III, spreading the investments out on a geographic, property type, risk profile and general partner sponsorship basis.
The latest commitment by Texas Teachers represents the third allocation the pension fund has made with LaSalle for the Ranger Co-Investment programme.
The institutional investor allocated $200m to the initial Ranger Co-Investment Fund in 2009 and another $200m to Ranger Co-Investment Fund II in 2011.
Texas Teachers also placed $50m into the AGRE Asia Real Estate Investment, a commingled fund managed by Apollo Global Real Estate.
Apollo Real Estate looks at a variety of investment opportunities.
According to the manager’s website, these can include distressed debt and equity recapitalisations, distress for control situations, buying corporate real estate and investing into existing real estate platforms and operating companies.
The pension fund made one real asset commitment with a $300m allocation into the Brookfield Infrastructure Fund II-B, which invests in toll roads, airports, seaports, railroads, communication towers and satellites, among other things.
Texas Teachers made a $251m commitment to Brookfield Americas Infrastructure Fund in 2010.
