Iowa Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) intends to make $500m (€464m) worth of real assets investments in the coming year, the pension fund disclosed in a board meeting document.
As part of its 2024 pacing plan, Iowa PERS intends to allocate up to $200m towards real estate investments by balancing property sales with acquisitions. Additionally, it plans to invest $300m in non-real estate transactions within its real assets portfolio.
Iowa PERS is known for investing in real estate through a variety of separate account managers including Clarion, Invesco, RREEF and UBS. According to the pension fund, its $408.5m account with Clarion produced a one-year return of -24.8%.
The non-real estate investment in 2024 is expected to be placed into infrastructure through a mixture of funds and co-investments.
The pension fund currently has only one investment in infrastructure valued at $315m and held the Brookfield Super-Core Infrastructure Partners fund.
Iowa PERS plans to partially fund its 2024 real assets pacing strategy by liquidating its timber and farmland investments over the next two years.
Specifically, the pension fund intends to sell its $227.5m timber holdings managed by Forest Investment and its $106.4m farmland portfolio managed by UBS Farmland Investors.
Additionally, MMM Pension is exploring the possibility of committing $100m to a real assets credit sub-portfolio within the private credit asset class.
This commitment could be made as an add-on to an existing real estate debt manager or as an investment in a new manager.
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