Mass PRIM hires Brookfield as new REIT manager

The $62 billion Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board has terminated its REIT mandate with Invesco Real Estate and reallocated the position to Brookfield Investment Management to manage its REIT portfolio.

BlackRock and Timbercreek Asset Management were placed on the manager bench following an RFP search in 2015. Brookfield initially was funded with $200 million in 2016 following the RFP search.

Invesco had managed the portfolio since 2014 after EII Capital Management and has a longstanding relationship with Mass PRIM. With both Invesco’s securities group and private real estate team combined, Invesco manages approximately $2 billion for the pension fund, of which $287.4 million is in a public REITs portfolio and $1.7 billion is in private real estate.

Mass PRIM’s REIT portfolio seeks to provide exposures to areas of real estate outside of the United States that are not easily attained through 
private investing, including office buildings and other large assets, self-storage, data centers and development pipelines, according to the document.

As of March 31, 2017, Mass PRIM had an exposure to public REITs of 23 percent of its real estate portfolio. Mass PRIM’s target allocation to REITs is 2 percent of its PRIT Fund, or 20 percent of total real estate, according to the document.