GIC anchors Coima’s Italy-focused brown-to-green fund

Milan-based manager Coima SGR has launched a brown-to-green real estate fund aimed at decarbonising office and residential assets across cities in Italy. The fund has amassed €200 million at first close, which affiliate title PERE understands came from Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC as anchor investor.

Coima is looking to raise €500 million for the fund by the end of 2024, and targets a levered IRR of 14 percent. The manager has identified a pipeline of more than €1 billion in assets in which to invest, with leverage applied, exclusively through a redevelopment and retrofit strategy. The firm will target LEED certification for all buildings and will align with the European taxonomy on decarbonisation. The fund classifies as Article 8 under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation.

This is not GIC’s first investment with Coima, with the sovereign fund having previously committed to the second fund in the Italian manager’s opportunistic series, according to sources familiar with the matter. Coima closed on €650 million for Coima Opportunity Fund II in 2018, according to PERE data, with other known investors including pension funds Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and National Pension Service of Korea. Fund II is fully invested.

The first fund in the series is fully divested, having closed in 2011, and delivered a levered IRR of 13 percent.

For its impact vehicle, the Coima ESG City Impact Fund, the firm has approved an increase in its target size to €2 billion. The fund has raised over €800 million to date from Italian institutional investors against the original target of €1 billion by year end.

The firm is also in market with its value-add Housing Fund, which launched in March this year with a target of €400 million, as reported by PERE. The firm achieved a first close for the fund on €300 million in Q2, PERE understands.

Coima has €9.3 billion in assets under management, and is run by founder and chief executive officer Manfredi Catella.

GIC has been especially active in real estate in the past 18 months, catapulting it to the top of PERE’s Global Investor 100 ranking this year. Real estate’s share of its overall portfolio increased from 10 percent in the financial year ended March 31, 2022 to 13 percent in the financial year ended March 31, 2023. In its annual report this summer, the investor announced it had hit the upper policy limit of its real estate allocation.