Pennsylvania SERS confirms $75m commitment

The US public pension has backed Blackstone's latest mega real estate offering.

Institution: Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System
Headquarters: Harrisburg, US
AUM: $39.9 billion
Allocation to alternatives: 26.8%

Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System has confirmed a $75 million commitment to Blackstone Real Estate Partners X, according to materials from its June investment committee meeting.

This is an existing investment manager relationship for PennSERS. BREP
X is targeting $25 billion of capital commitments – a successful close would make it the largest private real estate vehicle on record. Blackstone held a final close for the previous fund in the series on $21 billion in September 2019, oversubscribed to its $18 billion target.

PennSERS currently allocates 7.1 percent of its investment portfolio to private real estate, comprising $2.83 billion in capital. The $39.9 billion public pension has a target allocation of 8 percent to private real estate.

Within its private real estate allocation, 42.1 percent of investment is slated for core or core-plus vehicles, with a further 45.2 percent focused on value-add or opportunistic investments. The remaining 12.7 percent is allocated to investment in real estate securities.

As illustrated below, PennSERS’ recent private real estate commitments have tended to focus on North American value-add vehicles that invest across a diversified portfolio.

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