co-investment | Pension360

Texas Pension Official: Sovereign-Wealth Funds Crowd Out Pensions on Co-Investing Opportunities

At a recent board meeting, a top official at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas outlined an emerging source of competition for pension funds looking to co-invest: sovereign wealth funds.

Britt Harris, the pension fund’s CIO, said that his fund might have to consider new strategies to get in on the best co-investing opportunities, according to LBO Wire.

More on Harris’ remarks, as reported by the Wall Street Journal:

“The whole emergence of sovereign wealth funds is disrupting the market,” said Britt Harris, the chief investment officer of the roughly $132 billion pension system during a board meeting in February. “We’re in competition with funds outside the country that are very large and very heavily resourced.”

Texas Teachers, which Mr. Harris said could “easily” do transactions above $100 million, faces intense competition for large co-investment deals as sovereign-wealth funds increase in influence.

[…]

Texas Teachers sources co-investment deals, which it calls “principal investments,” by focusing on a network of existing general partners and strategic partners.

“We have to convince these guys that we are the people to bring big investments to,” Mr. Harris said.

The pension fund may consider stationing staff in other major cities to expand its presence beyond its Austin, Tex., stronghold. It also is trying to structure transactions creatively.

“We have to come up with new ways of structuring things,” said Eric Lang, senior managing director of real assets and private equity.

Texas Teachers said it hopes to become involved in deals before they are signed and syndicated across a manager’s limited partner base.

“We’d like to be a full underwriting partner,” Mr. Lang said. He raised the possibility that if the pension fund has a larger role in due diligence before a deal closes, “We might have to share in deal costs with the [general partner].”

Texas Teachers manages $132 billion in assets.

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Indiana Pension Commits $100 Million to Real Estate Fund

The Indiana Public Retirement System has committed $100 million to a Blackstone fund that invests in real estate.

From IPE Real Estate:

The US pension fund, which has had limited exposure to core-plus funds, said it was unconcerned by Blackstone’s move into core-plus property and its branching out into opportunistic strategies.

Most of Indiana’s fund investments in real estate – totalling approximately $2bn – have been in core and opportunity funds.

The pension fund has made three previous investments with Blackstone, totalling $216m, including a co-investment and two investments in the fund manager’s opportunity funds VI and VII.

With the new investment, Indiana joins several other public pension funds in the Property Partners fund.

The Virginia Retirement System and the Texas Permanent School Fund each made $100m commitments to the fund last year, while the Arizona State Retirement System committed $50m.

Blackstone is looking to raise $1bn for the fund, which is open-ended and leveraged at around 50%.

The fund manager is co-investing $35m.

Limited partners are projected to achieve 9-11% returns from the fund, focused solely on US multifamily, office, retail and industrial real estate.

The fund will buy single properties, as well as make entity-level investments in real estate operating companies.

The Indiana PRS manages $30 billion in assets.

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Recruiting Private Equity Talent Getting More Expensive For Pension Funds

As more pension funds participate in direct investing or co-investing ventures, they find the need for private equity experts on their staff.

But the cost of getting that talent is growing: a recent survey found that almost 50 percent of pension funds are having to shovel out higher salaries to recruit and retain private equity employees.

From the Financial Times:

Private equity employees are commanding higher wages as increasing amounts of money are pushed into the asset class.

Almost half of North American limited partnerships (pension funds and funds of funds) are having to increase their pay scales to recruit staff, according to a survey of 114 investors and private equity funds by Coller Capital, which invests in the secondary private equity market. The European market lags behind somewhat, with 30 per cent of LPs increasing salaries.

“The industry has done very well over the past couple of years, with very strong distribution,” said Michael Schad, a partner at Coller Capital. “As there is more demand from employers, wages can go up.”

As well as the industry expanding, investors are entering more directly into the asset class, either co-investing with general partners or building their own private equity investment capabilities. “This requires different skill sets,” said Mr Schad.

The survey also asked where funds were looking to recruit PE employees:

While more than half expect to recruit employees from other LPs, almost as many (46 per cent) will look for talent at alternative asset managers that are not private equity firms. A third will take on former investment bankers, but just a quarter hope to attract workers from general partners (private equity firms).

Increasing remuneration may be good news for the LPs, according to remarks made by Klaus Ruhne, partner at ATP Private Equity Partners, during a round-table held by private equity consultant Triago in November.

“What is more important than the size of teams, or the value of assets under management, is the frequent lack of generous long-term incentive plans for limited partners,” he said. “Without a restructuring of LP compensation, we will continue to witness an inordinate amount of inconsistency and even foolishness when it comes to how capital is deployed and how limited partners are organised.”

The survey was conducted by Coller Capital.

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Preqin: More Pensions Invested in Private Equity, But Average Allocation Down From 2013

Data from Preqin shed some light on private equity activity in 2014, and showed that more public pension funds invested in private equity in 2014.

Even still, public pensions’ average allocation to private equity has dipped slightly since 2013.

From ThinkAdvisor:

Preqin, the investment alternatives data provider, found that the number of active U.S.-based public pension funds in private equity has risen year over year, from 266 in 2010 to 299 in October 2014. The average allocation to private equity was 7% as of October 2014, down from 7.2% a year earlier.

Preqin said private equity looked set to remain an important component of U.S.-based public pension funds’ portfolios for years to come, offering investors good portfolio diversification and outsized returns over the long term.

Fundraising for the year was likely to be strong, Preqin reported, with $254 billion raised by funds that closed in the first half.

A record 2,205 funds are currently in the market seeking an aggregate $774 billion, compared with 2,098 funds that were looking to raise $733 billion in January.

Preqin also reported that its internal data showed co-investment would increase in 2014. It acknowledged that concerns about high expenses and competition were holding back some general partners from offering co-investment opportunities. But researchers found that co-investment figured prominently in the plans of many GPs and limited partners.

Preqin said that as the private equity industry matures and investors become more sophisticated, co-investment activity could increase, with benefits for both fund managers and limited partners.

Preqin also found that venture capital funds raised more money in 2014 than in 2013.

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