NORTH AMERICA – The Townsend Group has raised $357.5m (€262.9m) in capital commitments for its latest investment fund, the Townsend Real Estate Alpha Fund.
Capital for the commingled fund came from more than 50 institutional investors, including public and private sector pension funds, foundations, endowments and select private wealth partners.
Terry Ahern, chief executive and co-founder at Townsend, said: “We are grateful for the confidence and support both long-standing clients and new investors alike have placed in Townsend.”
The Real Estate Alpha Fund is an opportunity fund that invests on a global basis.
Townsend has already invested or committed two-thirds of capital raised for the fund across multiple strategies and geographies.
The fund has three separate strategies: co-investments, buying out existing limited partners in secondary commingled fund interests and specialised primary funds.
In other news, the San Francisco City and County Employees’ Retirement System has approved a commitment of up to $50m into the DivcoWest Fund IV.
This is a value-add commingled fund managed by DivcoWest Properties.
The firm is targeting total capital commitments of $888m with a hard cap of $1bn and expects to hold a single close in early 2014.
San Francisco City and County stated in a board meeting document that the target return for the fund was a 14-18% gross IRR with a 2x gross multiple.
DivcoWest will make a co-investment into the commingled fund of up to $15m.
The deals for Fund IV will include the acquisition, repositioning, redeveloping and in some cases new development of office and R&D properties.
At least 90% of the fund will be in the US, particularly markets like the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California, greater Boston and New York City.
The remaining 10% of the portfolio could be in either Canada or Europe.
San Francisco has $133m of equity left to invest in non-core real estate between now and June of this year.
