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BT pension scheme to sell UK real estate investments
Real estate news By Kate Holton
Mon Oct 8, 2007 12:51pm EDT
LONDON, pension fund manager said on Monday that it has put some of its British real estate assets worth 240 million pounds ($489 million) up for sale to fund property purchases abroad. A spokesman for Hermes Pensions Management Ltd said stakes in 10 real estate funds would be divested in order to part-finance around 700 million pounds for an international real estate investment programme.
"Hermes commenced an overseas investment programme at the end of last year in anticipation of relative outperformance of international real estate markets compared to the UK market," the spokesman said. "The proposed disposal of a balanced portfolio of market leading investment funds will contribute to funding this diversification."
Hermes said the interests on offer totalled over 240 million pounds, representing some 17 percent of the British Telecom Pension Scheme's total holding in these vehicles and would be offered as a complete portfolio or in one or more tranches.British institutional investors have increasingly been looking to diversify their real estate assets abroad as evidence grows that an extended UK property bull market has run its course and UK property returns could slow. Analysts at Morgan Stanley said sales of the BT real estate assets would provide direct evidence of how much yields on UK property had moved up since a global credit crunch began.
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