The School Employees Retirement System of Ohio is committing €40m to a Rockspring fund focused on Europe.

The US pension fund is backing the TransEuropean VI vehicle, focused on the office, retail and industrial sectors in Continental Europe and the UK.

The real estate manager typically invests in core-plus/value-add assets.

Ohio School Employees also made changes to its core open-ended fund manager line-up, according to a board meeting document.

The pension fund is seeking a redemption of $25m (€22.1m) from the UBS Trumbull Property Fund, citing underperformance.

The investor made a $25m new commitment to the Clarion Lion Properties Fund and is also looking to issue another partial redemption during the next fiscal year, which starts on 1 July.

The overall goal with these changes is to improve the performance of the core sector of the pension fund’s real estate portfolio, while not changing the risk profile.

Ohio School Employees’ core portfolio makes up 78% of the real assets portfolio.

The return on core assets for the trailing one-year period as of the end of March had underperformed the benchmark for real assets by approximately 140 basis points.

Ohio School Employees could also be making more changes to its manager line-up.

The pension fund stated in its 2017 fiscal year investment plan that one of its objectives was to continue to improve the risk/return characteristics of the global real assets portfolio, reduce fees and realign the manager line-up as needed.

The pension fund said it had not made a decision on how much new capital would be invested in the strategies for the new fiscal year and was evaluating the market cycle for real estate.

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