The Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana has approved $125m (€92.4m) of real estate commitments, including a new commitment to a distressed fund from Lone Star.

The plan approved a $75m allocation to Lone Star’s Fund IX and $50m to Carlyle’s Realty Partners VII.

Maurice Coleman, director of private markets for the pension fund, said Lone Star had the ability to invest capital effectively for distressed assets.

Half of Fund IX’s investments will be in Europe, with 40% in the US and the remainder in Japan.

Louisiana’s investment consultant, Hamilton Lane, said 60-70% of Fund IX’s European investment would be in distressed securities and loans from consumer and corporate entities.

A further 20% could be invested in distressed corporate debt and control investments, with the remainder in lending and servicing platforms.

Lone Star is looking to raise $7.4bn for the fund, which will make equity investments of at least $100m in a mixture of residential and corporate debt transactions.

Lone Star expects $500bn of speculative-grade corporate debt to mature in Europe, chiefly in the UK, Germany and France.

Hamilton Lane said it had identified more than $200bn of residential loans in six European countries, mainly Spain, Italy and the UK.

Carlyle, meanwhile, is looking to raise $3bn for its Partners VII fund, targeting opportunistic real estate in North America. 

Most of the investment will be in New York, Washington DC, Northern and Southern California and Florida.

The fund is targeting offices, apartments and senior housing.

Hamilton Lane said the fund would have a 50-55% loan-to-value ratio for the portfolio.

Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, meanwhile, has terminated its agricultural separate account with Cozad/Westchester Agricultural Management.

Hancock Natural Resources Group has been appointed as the new manager for the existing $145m separate account and awarded up to $100m for new acquisitions.

Illinois said the decision was not based on performance.

The fund said TIAA-CREF’s 2010 acquisition of Westchester, giving it first rights to all acquisitions, made it difficult to grow the mandate in future.

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