NORTH AMERICA – The Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund has approved a $200m (€154m) investment into a value-added separate account with Amstar Advisers.
The capital will be invested alongside the European family office that founded Amstar in 1987.
The expected equity ratio on deals is 60% from Oregon PERF and 40% from the family office.
The principals at Amstar will be investing $2m of its own equity to the separate account.
The primary investment focus for the separate account involves office and residential assets in primary and select secondary markets in the US.
The office deals will involve buying existing assets in supply-constrained markets with long-term growth potential where the property can be restored to a core state at some point in future.
A secondary focus of the separate account will include opportunistic investments in Class A and B industrial and retail properties and select one-off investments in value-add hotels.
Oregon wrote in a board meeting document that the net return objective for deals for the separate account was 11-14%.
In other news, the University of California Board of Regents for the university's Total Return Investment Pool has doubled the size of its targeted allocated for investing in real estate securities from 5% to 10%.
The scheme is looking to invest an additional $200m into the sector in future.
UC Regents has also chosen to move its existing $227m REIT portfolio for TRIP from a domestic strategy to a global one.
The change on the REIT investment strategy will not become affective until 1 August, according to an email from UC Regents.
The new targeted allocation also includes a range as to where the global REITs sector could fall – this would be 7.5% on the low end and 12.5% on the upper end.
The TRIP portfolio currently has total plan assets valued at $4bn.
Lastly, New Mexico State Investment Council approved a $65m commitment into the Perella Weinberg Real Estate Fund II.
The fund has an investment focus on core Europe, including Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the Nordics and the UK.
The total capital raise planned for the fund is approximately $1.6bn.
Investors will get a 12% preferred return first, and the fund will target a gross IRR of 20% and a 2.0 equity multiple.
Perella Weinberg will be looking at a variety of investment strategies for Fund II.
These include direct purchase of properties that need a value enhancement or repositioning, distressed purchases of portfolios and/or loans, value platforms for investing in specific markets or real estate sectors and entity-level investments in public and private real estate companies.
New Mexico's commitment into Fund II is part of plans to invest $180m of new non-core real estate investments planned for 2013.
