Alistair T H Smith, BSc, FRICS, is managing director, Europe, at Institutional Real Estate, Inc. Smith leads IREI’s European market development, deepen the firm’s relationships with institutional investors, investment managers, and real estate professionals across the United Kingdom, Europe and the Middle East.
Most recently, he served as head of real estate at Border to Coast Pensions Partnership — the United Kingdom’s largest Local Government Pension Scheme pools, with approximately £65 billion ($87 billion) in total assets under management across 11 Partner Funds serving approximately 1.1 million defined-benefit beneficiaries.
At Border to Coast, Smith built the firm’s real estate investment capability entirely from the ground up, growing the team from two professionals to eight and taking the real estate portfolio from zero to approximately £3.05 billion ($4.1 billion) in assets under management across three distinct fund structures in fewer than four years. He designed and launched the Border to Coast Global Core and Global Value Add funds in November 2023 with initial capital commitments of approximately £850 million ($1.14 billion), and the Border to Coast U.K. Direct Main Fund in October 2024 — a £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) vehicle that delivered a 7.78 percent total return in its first year of operation, exceeding its benchmark by 15 basis points. The U.K. Direct Main Fund has since grown to approximately £2.2 billion ($3.0 billion) in assets under management, with a forward deployment pipeline of approximately £2 billion ($2.7 billion).
Smith’s work at Border to Coast encompassed the full lifecycle of institutional fund creation: fund structure design and board approval; regulatory approval from the Financial Conduct Authority and tax relief confirmation from HMRC; competitive tendering and appointment of global and U.K. investment advisers including Townsend Group and Aberdeen; service-provider onboarding; asset due diligence across more than 110 properties; and post-launch capital deployment into retail, office and urban logistics assets. He managed a coordinated team of internal professionals and external advisers including Knight Frank, JLL, CBRE, Workman, Hollis, Ramboll, Burges Salmon, CMS, Mercer, Albourne and Deloitte.
