UNITED STATES - Maine Public Employees Retirement System is planning to invest between $100m (€76.5m) and $200m in real estate in 2010.
The pension fund will target value-added and opportunistic commingled real estate funds with the capital.
Andrew Sawyer, chief investment officer at Maine PERS, said: "We have already established a core open-ended commingled fund strategy and have invested a portion of our capital in public REITs. The next evolution of our investment program would be to invest in other kinds of commingled funds."
The pension fund has invested in core open-ended commingled funds with JP Morgan Asset Management, BlackRock Realty, Principal Real Estate Investors and Prudential Real Estate Investors.
Maine PERS considers opportunity funds as those with an investment strategy that goes after debt investments or deploys capital in non-US markets.
The pension fund is looking at making some new commitments to commingled funds over the next few months in conjunction with its real estate consultant ORG Real Property.
Maine PERS is significantly below its 10% strategic target allocation for real estate. It currently has invested 3.5% of its $9.6bn of total assets invested in the asset class.
