UNITED STATES - Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund has made a $200m (€135.4m) investment with Invesco, as part of a deal which sees some of its properties move into its core real estate fund.

The pension fund made this transaction as part of its exchange of six of its properties into the $2bn commingled fund.

One more property is also going to move into the commingled offering shortly and, at that time, the pension fund will then decide how much larger its investment in the commingled fund should be.

The pension fund made its latest move at its January 23 board meeting, helped in the process by real estate consultant The Townsend Group, as Ohio Police & Fire feels investing in a commingled fund will allow it to end up with an ownership stake in more properties than was possible in a separate account.

The pension fund had made a decision last year to trade the seven properties managed by Invesco Real Estate on a separate account basis.  It would move them into a commingled fund run by the same real estate manager. (See earlier IPE Real Estate story: Ohio Police & Fire sells separates)
http://www.ipe.com/realestate/Ohio_Police_Fire_sells_separates_25619.php

Ohio Police & Fire hired Robert A. Stanger & Co. in the spring of '07 to act as an independent real estate investment fiduciary to oversee the process.

The separate account properties were a mixture of office buildings, industrial properties, apartments and shopping centres. They are located in several areas of the United States.

Ohio Police & Fire is expected to have a fairly quiet year in 2008 when it comes to investing it real estate as the pension fund is very close to its 8% targeted allocation for real estate and there are no immediate plans to increase the allocation.

The pension fund's real estate portfolio was valued at $970m, through the end of 2007, equating to 7.6% of its $11bn in total assets.

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