Chicago-based real estate investor LaSalle Investment Management has raised over $2.2 billion for its APAC value-add property fund LaSalle Asia Opportunity VI (LAO VI), according to a release on Thursday.
The fund, which exceeded its initial target of $1.5 billion, received commitments from global institutional investors, including pension funds from various US states such as Arkansas Teacher Retirement System, Teachers’ Retirement System of Illinois, California State Teachers’ Retirement System, and Los Angeles-based Water and Power Employees’ Retirement Plan.
Individual investors and LaSalle’s employees also contributed to the fundraising.
The committed capital will provide buying power for over $7 billion worth of assets, the company said.
“We are pleased to have raised over $2.2 billion for LAO VI and to have again exceeded our initial target for the Fund, especially against the economic headwinds brought by the pandemic over the past two years,” said Marc Montanus, fund manager for the LaSalle Asia Opportunity Fund Series.
Lasalle aims to deploy the new capital in diverse asset classes across the commercial, residential, logistics, and hospitality sectors. The firm has already invested around 25% of the freshly-injected cash.
The LaSalle Asia Opportunity Fund series has invested over $13 billion worth of assets so far. “In the last 10 years, the average asset returns generated by the series have exceeded its target of 18% net IRR,” the company said in the release.
LAO VI is a closed-ended fund, the sixth instalment in LaSalle’s buyout series, and will follow the footsteps of its predecessor funds by investing in repositioning and redevelopment projects in cities such as Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Singapore.
In July, LaSalle had announced that it had secured a $1.29 billion close for LAO VI, nearly a year following its first closing at $1.07 billion in October of 2021.
The New York-listed private equity titan Blackstone in the same month announced in its earnings call that it had raised approximately $4 billion in the first tranche of Blackstone Real Estate Partners Asia III — LAO VI’s rival fund.