GLOBAL – The University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) is working on several real estate commitments to invest in Europe.
The first of these is a $75m (€56.6m) commitment made to Meadow Real Estate Fund II, a commingled fund that will invest solely in London and New York City.
UTIMCO has two other European commitments in the pipeline for fiscal year 2013 – a country-specific manager fund based in Germany and an opportunistic pan-European strategy.
Mark Shoberg, managing director for real estate at UTIMCO, said: "There are some good investment opportunities in Europe to take advantage of the distressed markets that still exist there.
"Our thinking in the Meadow fund is that we like the management team, and they have a history and track record of being able to find and complete good investment opportunities."
Meadow Partners is hoping for a $400m equity raise.
The company is mainly getting commitments from pension funds and endowments in the US, although it has had some preliminary discussions with investors in Europe.
The leverage component on the fund will be in the 60-70% range.
Its first deal in London will be a recapitalisation of an existing office building.
Meadow Partners will be looking at a variety of deals for Fund II, including equity, debt, preferred equity and entity-level deals.
The property types open for consideration are apartments, office, retail and hotels.
Deals for Fund II will be in the range of $10m to $25m of equity.
Apart from Meadow Partners, UTIMCO has made one other real estate-related commitment, a $60m investment into Grain Infrastructure Fund II.
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