Zoe Hughes

Hines closes another Brazil real estate account with the California Public Employees pension fund. CalPERS has invested more than $380m to target Brazil with Hines over the past five years.

The $27.4bn endowment will keep eyeing secondaries sales and acquisitions, after reporting a 2.7% real estate loss in the past year. Real estate, though, would be one of the 'most interesting' opportunities over the next few years.

Despite trying to sell itself to third parties, the real estate investment arm of the Dutch insurance group has hired Bruno Cohen as CIO of its Paris office.

KingSett and AIMCo, the consortium of Alberta pensions and endowments, acquire ING’s 50% stake in an industrial fund for $1.9bn – along with the fund’s management platform, ING Real Estate Canada.

The fund managers have raised more than $100m each from investors to recapitalise Stockbridge’s $1bn Fund II and RREEF’s $1.6bn Global Opportunities Fund II.

The firms will acquire the bankrupt Sea Island resort in a restructuring that will wipe away $340m of the company's debt.

The New York-based private equity real estate firm is looking to buying a pool of distressed loans from Morgan Stanley’s balance sheet, with a face value of more than $1.1bn and backed by 30 properties in the greater Tokyo area.

The $205bn California Public Employees’ Retirement System focuses on restructuring its real estate separate accounts and ‘letting go’ weak managers, as it reports declines of 37.1% in the year to the end of March.

After being subject to one actual mezzanine foreclosure auction, threatened with two more and ultimately placed into bankruptcy protection, the W Hotel – Union Square will be sold to Host Hotels & Resorts.

LPs around the world, including CalSTRS, are eyeing greater core exposure, but how do they balance that against a need for higher returns? By Zoe Hughes