GLOBAL - Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) - at £32.4bn (€38.3bn), one of the UK's largest pension funds - has bought a retail property in the Scottish town of Perth for £1.65m.

Sold by Knight Frank Investments, the property in 158/162 High Street neighbours the St John's Shopping Centre acquired by the scheme earlier in the year for £31m.

With a standing tenant for the next nine years, USS can expect a rental income of £116,000 a year, with a pre-agreed upward increase in 2014.

Scheme fund manager Fergus Egan said: "The acquisition increases the long-term asset management opportunities available to us in terms of improving and complementing St John's Shopping Centre's existing retail offer."

In other UK news, Axa Real Estate Investment Managers has sold the freehold interest in a retail unit in Liverpool City Centre for £7m.

The sale, to Vabled Real Estate, was on behalf of Friends Life Assurance Society.

The property is leased to Vodafone until June 2019, with the sale achieving a yield of 5.75%.

Axa has also sold an Essex-based trade park to Standard Life Investments (SLI) for £10m, achieving a 6.2% yield.

The nine-unit Ascent Park is fully let, with the average lease running for a further eight years.

SLI, meanwhile, has sold two logistics parks in Eastern Europe for a combined price of €43m.

The parks - D5 Pilsen in the Czech Republic and Torun in Poland - were sold by its Select Property Fund.

Both properties were developed by the fund, with D5 built four years ago and Torun built last year.

Meanwhile, Rockspring Property Investment Managers has acquired an office building in Warsaw's Central Business District for an undisclosed sum.

Jones Lang LaSalle acted on behalf of Rockspring, while CBRE acted as vendor.

In other Polish news, Atrium European Real Estate has bought the Molo shopping centre in Szczecin for €55m.

The city, with a population of 400,000, counts among the country's larger seaports, and Molo is 100% let and was recently refurbished by CBRE Global Investors' PFCE Soparfi A for a cost of €10m.

Finally, Warburg-Henderson KAG has sold an office building in Munich to Union Investment for an undisclosed sum.

The unit, currently fully let, was acquired on behalf of its German open-ended fund UniImmo: Deutschland.

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