UNITED STATES - School Employees Retirement System of Ohio has approved a commitment of $50m (€32.1m) into the Beacon Capital Strategic Partners VI commingled fund.

This commitment falls in line with the pension fund's real estate plan for fiscal year 2009 as its intention is to make commitments with several of its existing commingled fund managers that have already proven themselves to officials.

Ohio School Employees has invested with Beacon Capital Partners in the past as it made a $50m commitment made to Beacon Capital Strategic Partners V in March 2007.

Pension fund officials belive Beacon Capital has proven itself to be a good manager of office buildings in many markets in the US and Europe.

The projected returns for investors in Fund VI is a ‘high teens to low twenties' IRR.

Beacon Capital is looking at raising $6bn for its latest commingled fund so it is likely pension funds will play a big part of the total capital raising.

The real estate manager looks for properties in markets that have many of the same characteristics such as regions with knowledge-based economies, physical limits on new supply, urban areas with greater liquidity, are seen as ‘24/7' cities and show strong long-term demand fundamentals.

Markets carrying these features can be found in both the US and Europe, as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, London and Paris all fit the grade.

Along with this latest move, Ohio School Employees also had an initial discussion at its July board meeting about the potential of the infrastructure sector.

Officials say this was a general discussion about the sector with the staff of the pension fund and its general consultant, Summit Strategies Group but no action was taken and no decision has yet been made as to when infrastructure would be considered as a potential investment.

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