Virginia Retirement System has added Tristan Capital Partners to its list of managers for real estate.
The US pension fund has made a €75m commitment to Curzon Capital Partners 5 Long-Life, a European real estate fund.
Virginia said “the investment will complement the overall assets that we current hold in our real assets portfolio”.
As of the end of 2016, the pension fund had invested around 6.5% of its total real estate portfolio in Europe.
The capital from Virginia is part of the €800m Tristan initially raised for Curzon Capital 5, which has an open-ended structure and a value-add investment strategy.
Curzon Capital Partners 5 Long-life is the latest in Tristan Capital’s core-plus series of European real estate funds – but is the first to use a “long-life structure”.
In March, Tristan Capital said the vehicle had “multiple liquidity features and will allow investors to recycle capital in the same vehicle”.
The annoucement comes at a time when a number of investment managers are raising capital for pan-European open-ended vehicles as they respond to investor demand for income yields.
A mixture of existing office, logistics, retail and residential property types will be bought for the fund, which is aiming for a net 10% IRR.
It will mostly be buying assets in Western and central markets in Europe.
Virginia, which does not have a specific targeted allocation for real estate, will only invest in the asset class when it finds what it considers to be a compelling investment opportunity.
The real estate portfolio is part of its real assets portfolio.
The pension fund had invested $8.9bn or 12.8% of its $69.9bn of total plan assets in real assets, at the end of 2016.
