Pantheon targets $500m for debut real estate raise with refined secondaries strategy – updated

Pantheon, the 10th biggest investor in secondaries according to the SI 50, is targeting $500 million for its debut real estate vehicle as the team refines its secondaries strategy.

The London-headquartered firm’s real estate business will focus on the recapitalisation of platform investments, a source familiar with the fundraise told Secondaries Investor. Platform investments refers to transactions involving a single asset or a number of assets owned by an owner-operator of those assets.

The $500 million figure for Pantheon Real Estate Solutions Fund I was disclosed in a 31 May filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. It is unclear whether this is the target or hard-cap.

Pantheon launched its real estate investment strategy last July, hiring Roman Braslavsky and David Elliott from GI Partners, a San Francisco-based mid-market firm.

Partner and head of Pantheon real estate Braslavsky and managing director Elliott, both New York-based, as well as partner and global head of real assets Kathryn Leaf, are named as key persons on documents for the fund filed with the SEC.

Pantheon said in March it had entered into a strategic partnership with ShopOne Centers REIT, a real estate investment trust focused on grocery-anchored shopping centres in the US. The venture involved the recapitalisation of a portfolio of ShopOne-owned properties with the partners each investing additional capital giving the venture the ability to deploy in excess of $1 billion, according to a statement at the time.

Pantheon’s real estate strategy mainly targets investments in North America, the source added.

GP-led secondaries and re-caps in real estate are growing with transactions in the asset class increasing 24 percent year-on-year to $10.6 billion last year, according to data from Landmark Partners and Preqin. In the past five years, GP-led deals grew at an annualised rate of 38 percent per year, as reported by Landmark and Greenhill.

In February Blackstone disclosed the largest GP-led to date and the largest real estate transaction of any kind with its €21 billion recap of its Mileway European logistics platform.

Pantheon declined to comment.

Here are three things to know about Pantheon’s real estate strategy.

– This report was updated to reflect the correct date of the SEC filing as 31 May.