New Jersey to invest $400m in European funds

The New Jersey Division of Investment (NJDOI) has committed the total equivalent of $400 million to three European real estate funds, consisting of €75 million to Perella Weinberg’s Perella Weinberg Real Estate Fund II, £75 million (€88.93 million; $114.59 million) to M&G Investment Management’s M&G Real Estate Debt Fund (REDF) II and £125 million to M&G Real Estate Debt Fund III. The New Jersey State Investment Council (SIC), which oversees NJDOI’s investments, approved the commitments at its board meeting yesterday.

Read full article at PERE (subscription). 

Marlin Equity more than doubles AUM through $1.6bn fourth fundraise

Marlin Equity Partners has hit the $1.6bn target for its fourth buyout fund just eight months after launch. The rapid fundraise, which was initially reported by Dow Jones, is especially impressive given that Marlin aimed to collect more than double the total of all of its previous fundraises by hitting that total for Marlin Equity IV.

Commitments came from LPs including the New Jersey Division of Investment, which agreed to part with up to $100m, and the Texas County & District Retirement System, which could hand over up to $35m.

Read full article at PE News (subscription). 

Real estate overtakes commodities as top sovereign asset

Real estate topped the list of sovereign wealth funds’ investments last year, overtaking commodities and financial services, according to Institutional Investor’s Sovereign Wealth Center. Properties made up 26 percent of investments by these funds last year, up from 14 percent in 2011, according to the center’s report on investment trends by the funds released today.

Read full article at Opalesque (subscription). 

SAP boosts startup fund by 2.6X to stimulate big data innovation

SAP is betting big on startups. And big data. The business software behemoth is more than doubling its commitment to the SAP HANA Real Time Fund, going from $155 million to $405 million, to support innovation surrounding real-time applications and big data.

The SAP HANA fund launched in 2012 and primarily makes investments in early stage venture capital funds and startups building off SAP’s technology. HANA, which stands for High-Performance Analytic Appliance, is SAP’s next generation in-memory database. It can store up to 500 terabytes of data and execute at high speeds.

Read full article at Venture Beat. 

Washington Projects Invite the Small Local Investor

Washington Projects Invite the Small Local Investor - NYTimes.comThe practice of crowdfunding real estate is spreading from South America — where Prodigy Network recently raised around $239 million from 3,100 Colombians to build a 66-story skyscraper in Bogotá — to New York, where the developer Urban Muse is hoping to offer a slice of a Brooklyn Bridge Park project to the public.

Read full article at The New York Times.