Investors

Obama chooses private equity professional to head US pension agency

The departure of Joshua Gotbaum from Blue Wolf Capital will not trigger a key-man clause.

EPRA knocks Spain’s REIT plans

The European Public Real Estate Association says the new Spanish regime for property investment fails to capture the benefits of a ‘true REIT’.

ULI 2009: consistent 20% returns from real estate ‘unrealistic’

As transaction volumes start to slowly pick up in the US, real estate professionals at the ULI conference argue that investors need to “get real” over return expectations.

Real estate investors should be focused on risk

The high returns of the boom years have been replaced by another ‘R’ word: risk, according to a series of white papers by Ernst & Young. Real estate companies should now be focused on capital sources, reevaluating their business model and managing global risk.

Getting personal

The presence of a large number of family offices in the Middle Eastern LP base underlines the importance of relationships in the region, writes Siddharth Poddar.

OMERS chief: infrastructure is ‘almost perfect’ asset class

Michael Nobrega also said at a speech in New York that the 2-and-20 compensation model no longer works and active infrastructure investing is the wave of the future. He urged pensions to make allocations to the asset class and to make them large enough to invest in big-ticket assets.

PREA: Notable quotables

Zoe Hughes reviews the best quotes from the first day of the annual PREA conference, taking place in Beverly Hills.

PREA: GPs should be ‘nervous’ about commingled fund model

Investing in a club structure, with a handful of like-minded investors, is preferable to the limited partnership model, according to a panel of large pension plans and sovereign wealth funds.

PREA: No large scale US programme for commercial real estate

The US government has no plans to launch another "large-scale" bailout programme for the commercial property sector, but could help through TARP if the industry faces serious problems, the PREA conference was told today.

LaSalle makes first purchase for Paris fund

The Chicago-based investment manager is buying a property for close to €100 million from UK insurer Standard Life Investments.