Indiana inks Blackstone Tact Opps commitment

The Indiana Public Retirement System has committed $150 million to The Blackstone Group’s Tactical Opportunities platform, an Indiana spokesperson told Private Equity International.

Indiana disclosed a new investment with the firm in 25 April meeting materials, which the $27.1 billion retirement system released to Private Equity International on Friday.

The commitment will be used to invest opportunistically in a private or public sector securities and instruments, across the firm’s real estate, private equity, hedge fund and credit platforms, according to Indiana documents.

“Although the investments will generally fit one of the four categories mentioned above, they will not be such that they would typically fit the primary mandates of any of Blackstone’s existing funds,” according to the meeting materials.

Blackstone president Tony James previously described Tactical Opportunities as: “A very, very diverse group of things. Hard assets in Brazil; it’s ships;  it’s spectrum; it’s leases; it’s non-performing resi loans; it’s equity interests in some low risk; long duration assets; it’s all kinds of different thing”.  

Through the second quarter of 2013, the platform had delivered mid-double digit yields and IRRs in the mid-20s, James said during a Q2 2013 earnings call.

Indiana’s commitment size could grow to as much as $220 million across a four-year investment period, according to the meeting materials. Indiana is a limited partner in a pair of Blackstone Real Estate Partners VI and VII, and previously established a co-investment account with the firm in 2010.

James indicated that the firm had finished fundraising for the Tactical Opportunities fund, capping the fund at between $5 billion and $5.5 billion.

Blackstone collected about $1.5 billion in new commitments for Tactical Opportunities during the fourth quarter. The platform includes several separate accounts, including those managed on behalf of The New Jersey Division of Investment, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the Oregon State Treasury. 

“Tactical opportunities is for me the most interesting and exciting thing we’ve done in a long time,” James said, adding that the firm has invested nearly a third of this capital already. “At the pace we’re going, we’ll be back in the market probably in a little over a year.”

It is unclear whether James included Indiana’s commitment in his disclosure of Q4 commitment totals. A spokesperson for the firm had not responded to a request for comment at press time.