NORTH AMERICA – The Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund is planning to allocate as much as $200m (€147m) for real estate as part of its 2014 investment plan.

The vast majority of this capital is likely to be invested in tactical or non-core real estate.

The pension fund said it aimed to get closer to its goal of a 50/50 balance between strategic/core and tactical/non-core in its real estate portfolio.

Ohio Police & Fire currently has a real estate portfolio valued at $1.3bn, as of December 2013, with $795m in strategic and $500m in tactical.

The scheme said it would consider commingled funds that invest in the industrial sector and/or warehouses. 

The pension fund is currently underweight this sector.

The focus for the new commitments this year for tactical will be with managers based in the US across all property types.

Ohio Police & Fire will also be looking at non-US opportunities, including investing capital in either Europe or Asia.

Many of its commitments figure to be in the range of $35m to $50m. 

The pension fund will be souring potential investments through its real estate consultant, the Townsend Group.

In other news, San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System has approved a $50m commitment into the Torchlight Debt Opportunity Fund IV. 

This is a $1bn commingled fund managed by Torchlight Investors.

The debt fund focuses on mortgages, mezzanine loans, CMBS and other real estate-related investments in the US.

Investors in the fund are projected to achieve annualised net IRRs of at least 15% and annualised distributions of at least 6%. 

There is a 9% preferred return for the fund.

Torchlight will make a co-investment to Fund IV of 1% of the total capital commitments, with a cap of $10m. 

The deal size for Fund IV is $5m-30m. 

The maximum leverage allowed is 30%.

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