Deals

EDITOR'S LETTER: Do it your sovereign self

PERE March issue 2010

1 March 2010

You’ll note that the issue of PERE is larger – and more weighty – than previous issues. This is the case both in terms of actual gravity and editorial gravity.

There are many more pages in our March issue because it contains, of course, the highly anticipated PERE Awards, the results of our annual poll in which readers around the world vote for the most impactful people and firms in this industry. It was especially hard to appear smart – or even lucky – during 2009 and so the winners of the PERE Awards are to be commended.

But delivered in the pages of our March issue is also unprecedented access to the thoughts of people that will likely have a major impact on the market in 2010. Take, for example, our interview with Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister and architect of the European Union’s factious Alternative Investment Fund Manager directive. Rasmussen’s proposals will make the life of European fund managers in particular more difficult and expensive, and he explains to PERE why this is a good thing.

But the feature that represents the biggest breakthrough is Jonathan Brasse’s profile of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Our report is not what one typically reads of ADIA, that being of a publication looking from the outside in (or struggling to). Reporting from inside the emirate headquarters, PERE reveals ADIA's strategy as it surveys the global property opportunity.

We first began speaking with ADIA’s communications team last year about telling the story of the sovereign wealth giant’s transformation from a passive investor into a major do-it-yourself real estate investor staffed with world-class professionals. It is the first time that ADIA has allowed such a close look at its operations and it is only right therefore to devote 10 pages of coverage to the sovereign wealth fund. ADIA’s real estate department has chosen to tell its story now because it wants potential partners around the world to have an accurate understanding of its appetites and capabilities. And it has chosen to tell its story through PERE because our readers are the most important property investors on the global stage.

And our coverage of heavy-hitters continues into our highly readable European roundtable, also in this issue, in which two bankers, a fund manager and a limited partner exchange their varying views of the market. What one banker has to say about calls for him to “tidy up” his loan portfolio will not please those betting on a huge distressed opportunity.

Enjoy the weighty issues,