New York State Common Retirement Fund (NYSCRF) is to invest in logistics in Spain, and housing in Finland and the US through its emerging-manager programme.

NW1 Partners, founded by former Morgan Stanley and Equity International executives David Boyle and Brad Beanblossom, is one of the beneficiaries of the programme which was established in 2019 and is run by GCM Grosvenor

Through its Empire GCM RE Anchor Fund, NYSCRF will become a seed investor in the NW1 Spanish Logistics fund, committing $15m (€13.3m).

The value-add fund will seek to acquire newly developed and redeveloped Spanish logistics assets and NYSCRF told IPE Real Assets that the investment would provide an “opportunity to enter the European investment market on a targeted basis”.

NYSCRF said the Spanish industrial market was attractive due to the rise of e-commerce in the country.

The emerging-manager programme has also approved a €4.875m commitment to a Luxembourg-based vehicle managed by Sirius Capital Partners that will invest in real estate assets in the Finnish cities of Helsinki, Tampere and Turku.

Sirius will target newly-built, transit-oriented apartments and residential ground leases.

NYSCRF said it had no existing exposure to these markets and “the manager is very experienced with the strategy with a consistence performance”.

The emerging-manager programme also committed $20m to RailField Partners JV, a joint venture that will acquire equity interests in workforce housing assets with value-add components across the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Texas regions of the US.

NYSCRF said: “The strategy is well positioned to capitalise on strong fundamentals and a positive supply-demand balance.”

A previous version of this article misspelt the name of Sirius Capital Partners