LaSalle Investment Management, the leading global real estate investment manager, has this week launched the LaSalle Balanced UK Property Fund, available only to institutional investors. The new investment vehicle is a core open-ended UK property fund offering investors from around the world the opportunity to access the expertise and knowledge of LaSalle's established UK property platform, which has a proven track record of consistent long-term outperformance.
The Fund will invest in properties across the office, retail and warehouse market segments and completes LaSalle's global suite of core long term, open ended funds.
- Fund will focus on high quality, income producing properties
- Disciplined market and property selection combined with active asset management
- Current UK property cycle still presents a window of opportunity for investors to access attractive long-term returns
- UK Fund newest addition to firm's existing core, long term open ended funds in US, Continental Europe and Asia Pacific
LaSalle expects real estate to perform strongly over the next five years, due to current higher yields and a long-term rebound in rental values. Although some assets have become over-priced during the rally of the last six months, LaSalle expects further opportunities to present themselves in the second half of the year as deal flow improves. The target size of the Fund is £500 million, with a first close expected in the summer of 2010.
LaSalle Balanced UK Property Fund will be managed by Andrew Bull, one of the UK's foremost real estate investment managers with over 35 years' experience. Andrew brings a wealth of market knowledge, fund management skills and transactions expertise to the Fund, having been responsible for £525 million of transactions over the past three years. He is supported by Lucinda Liss and Tom Rose and a team of over 130 UK real estate staff, including a 50-strong team of asset managers responsible for extracting maximum value from the Fund's investments. The Fund will also benefit from LaSalle's industry-leading Strategy & Research team, which provides comprehensive proprietary forecasts of markets, sectors and individual locations to both drive Fund strategy and support investment decisions.
Andrew Bull, Director and Fund Manager, LaSalle Investment Management, said: "The LaSalle Balanced UK Property Fund provides investors from around the world with access to LaSalle's award-winning UK property platform, which has outperformed the IPD Universe over 3, 5 and 10 year periods, and by 580bps in 2009. We aim to optimize investment performance through disciplined market and property selection, implementing asset management plans and following a focused approach to sales.
"We have been considering launching this Fund for several years and believe that now is the right time for this type of long-term investment vehicle. We estimate that yields still have some way to go before fair value as a whole is breeched, and past trends suggest the UK property cycle offers at least a two-year window to buy into attractive returns following a downturn.
"We are targeting quality assets that will provide steady cash flow and appreciation, as well as a greater degree of liquidity for the Fund. LaSalle has significant on- and off-market deal sourcing capabilities in the UK, completing £5.6 billion of transactions over the past five years, including £750 million of acquisitions in 2009. We're confident that our significant access to deal flow will help ensure effective capital placement for the Fund."
Source: Citigate
