CBRE Investors raises US$100m of equity
Posted by luxuryasiahome on July 6, 2009
Real estate asset manager CBRE Investors has US$100 million to spend on Asian property via its just-closed fund of funds focused on that region, and may yet double that firepower, one of its executives said.
The CBRE Investors Asia Alpha Plus Fund had its first close of US$100 million on July 1 and has now opened for more money, said Jeremy Plummer, managing director of CBRE Investor’s global multi-manager division.
‘If we raise a further US$100 million, obviously it (the average deal size of US$10 million to US$15 million) will be double,’ he told Reuters in an interview last week.
On the prospects of raising another US$100 million equity, he said: ‘It’s possible. We’ve got some defined prospects.’
‘We’ve just done a close and we’ve got a pipeline of some other interests and we hope we’ll be in a good place actually to gather some more capital because there are some investors who like to go into Asia via fund of funds.’
Sixty per cent of the fund would be allocated to developed markets such as Japan, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea.
A further 30 per cent was earmarked for China with the balance going to other emerging markets, like India and Vietnam.
‘We’d be unlikely to go anywhere else,’ he said, adding the fund would not invest in Thailand, Indonesia or the Philippines.
The closed-ended, 10-year fund will be invested in other closed-ended funds over a period of two years. It would not be geared at the fund of funds level, but the average gearing of underlying funds would be about 45 per cent loan-to-value.
‘We just have to see how things play out over the two years as to how it gets allocated over those markets,’ Mr Plummer said.
‘A number of the markets we have to wait a bit longer – Singapore’s correcting very rapidly . . . Hong Kong we think needs more time.’ Mr Plummer would not divulge the fee structure.
Meanwhile, CBRE Investors, a unit of CB Richard Ellis, has a further US$50 million equity from its GREFF Global Real Estate Fund of Funds to invest, about US$25 million in Asia – specifically Japan and Australia – and the balance in the United States, Mr Plummer said.
‘We’re looking at four funds,’ he said, noting these included a loan-to-own strategy in Japan, direct real estate in Australia, and a mixture of opportunities in the United States.
Launched in 2007, the global fund of funds had an expected average gearing of about 55 per cent, Mr Plummer said.
Source : Business Times – 6 Jul 2009
