New York State Teachers Retirement System (NYSTRS) has approved $550m (€456.7m) of new real estate commitments.

The pension fund said it has made a $300m commitment to the Blackstone BioMed Life Science Real Estate fund and a $250m commitment to GMC CRE Opportunity Partnership, a GCM Grosvenor separate account relationship.

The $120.5bn pension fund told IPE Real Assets that the investment with Blackstone is compelling due to the “experience of the management team, the scale of the platform, the pipeline of opportunities and that the existing portfolio is located in global invocation centres.”

NYSTRS said the opportunistic GMC “mandate was left intentionally broad as the pension fund retains discretion on the investments for the proposed account. This type of investment structure gives us the ability to be patient to wait for opportunities to emerge.”

NYSTRS has also rehired Cohen & Steers as its domestic real estate investment trust manager overseeing the pension fund’s $1.9bn portfolio, renewed BlackRock’s manager role for the $829m commercial mortgage-backed securitisation portfolio and also rehired Raith Capital Partners as a manager of an $80.9m debt separate account advisor for the pension funds.

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