Iowa Public Employees Retirement System (IPERS) is in talks to hire Brookfield as its first infrastructure fund manager with a $300m (€264.9m) commitment to the Brookfield Super-Core Infrastructure Partners fund.

IPERS, which previously issued a request for proposal (RFP) with a plan to allocate $500m to infrastructure, told IPE Real Assets that the amount it intends to invest in the asset class had dropped due to a fall in the pension fund’s total fund value during the first quarter of the year.

At the end of the first quarter of the year, the pension fund’s assets had fallen to $31.6bn from the $35.4bn recorded during the end of last year.

The Super-Core Fund was launched in 2018 and currently manages $1.9bn worth of assets. The global fund invests in mature, cash-generating core assets with predominately contracted/regulated revenues.

The fund will target energy, power, utilities and transportation assets that can produce net internal rate of returns of 8% to 9%.

IPERS said it had a total of 12 responders to the RFP for infrastructure. The five finalists besides Brookfield were JP Morgan Asset Management for its Global Transport Income Fund, IFM Investors, Axium Infrastructure and First Sentier Investors.

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