Investors

The international private placement firm has joined the cacophony of calls from legitimate placement agents to alter a proposed rule providing a blanket ban on soliciting government entities.

In the year to the end of June, Virginia Retirement System’s real estate portfolio returned -28.3% compared to a 19.8% benchmark. The pension has lost $12.2bn in value in 12 months.

The $200bn National Pension Service of Korea has mandated London-based Rockspring to buy London assets as part of a $3bn investment programme aimed the mature markets of London, New York and Sydney.

The firm, backed by KKR, Five Mile and Goldman Sachs, has already agreed to sell its US mortgage business to Berkshire Hathaway and Leucadia National.

A European-listed fund managed by Denver-based ProLogis is altering its legal structure as a result of the credit crunch.

With transaction volumes down 80% over the past year alone, Jones Lang LaSalle warns that US investor appetite would only start to return in mid-2010, and could take a generation to recover to the levels seen in 2007. However, foreign investors are starting to ramp up their strategies.

Florida's state pension board has totally written off its $250m investment in Tishman Speyer's Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village deal, joining California's massive teachers' pension, which wrote its $100m investment in the deal to zero.

The veteran real estate investor has reportedly launched a $625m credit fund to target distressed real estate securities. The vehicle, Zell Credit Opportunity Fund, has raised $125m to date, according to regulatory filings.

Charter Hall, the Australian property fund manager established in 1991, is meeting investors’ concerns by giving them greater control over its freshly-launched Charter Hall Special Situations Office fund.

The two real estate fund managers are turning to the public markets to raise capital for their next debt vehicles. Brookfield Realty Capital Corp. and Marathon Real Estate Mortgage Trust are targeting $500m and $300m respectively.