US - The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System has made a 29.9% total net return on a redeemed $300m (€230m) position in the UBS Trumbull Property fund.
Ohio PERS made the investment into the Trumbull Property fund in January 2010, when the commingled fund had a redemption queue.
It currently has an investment queue of more than $2bn, making it the largest open-ended, core commingled fund in the US.
Ohio PERS said it would continue its strategy of selling stabilised core investments and using the capital for value-added and opportunistic areas.
Overall, the pension fund is looking to offload core assets in high demand by institutional investors and redeploying the capital to areas with less investor demand.
The Ohio PERS investment staff is now conducting due diligence on the BlackRock Diamond Property fund.
The pension fund intends to acquire a secondary interest in the Diamond fund if it can be purchased at a sufficient discount to the 31 December 2011 net asset value.
At year-end 2011, the fund had an estimated gross asset value of $1.1bn, a net asset value of $369m and a disposition queue of $9m.
The private REIT, launched in 2005, makes direct investments in real properties, developments, forward purchase commitments, real estate debt and common or preferred equity entity-level investments.
Most of the investments are in the main property types of office, industrial, retail and apartments.
Ohio PERS still has a little way to go to reach its targeted 10% allocation to real estate. As at 30 April, the fund was 9.2% invested in the asset class.
