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About Man GPM Aalto
Senior Portfolio Management Team
Our Strategies
Our direct real estate activities focus on US Single Family Rentals ('SFR'), which the Aalto team believes offers attractive risk/reward characteristics.
Our team has invested in several real estate sub-markets according to market opportunities available at the time. We typically take a long-term view on investing and focus on seeking value by actively managing the assets. Since 2012, Aalto has focused its direct real estate investment activities on the US single family rentals market which we believe offers compelling risk/reward characteristics and a diversified cash flow profile following the prolonged US housing market correction which lasted from 2006 to 2012.
Aalto has a clearly defined and focused investment process based around 14 metropolitan areas where we have acquired, refurbished and currently own over 3,300 individual properties. We believe the US single family residential market continues to offer value and is appealing to investors seeking the potential of inflation protected cash flow generated by a large and transparent asset class.
The direct real estate team consists of nine professionals who work closely with our local operating partners throughout the US. The team is run by Petteri Barman who acts as the portfolio manager alongside our US based housing team in our Charlotte (North Carolina) office, as well as our operations and finance teams.
The Aalto team has longstanding experience in the European and US real estate debt markets across both public and private markets.
Since late 2014, we have become more selective in our credit selection given the increasing competition in the European real estate debt markets and, as a result, we have focused on specific, overlooked niches in the market. Therefore, after considerable market research, Aalto began providing residential development loans into a niche market within the EU where it was identified that due to a combination of housing shortage, lack of financing from both traditional and alternative financiers, and pent up demand the fundamentals were in place for what we felt could be a conservative development loan strategy. The development loan strategies target smaller borrowers with strong track records.
In 2015, Aalto opened an office in the US to more efficiently run its US housing strategy. As a part of the expansion, Aalto hired a team from Wells Fargo with a history of US real estate lending experience (both pre- and post-crisis). In the US market, Aalto currently focuses on direct lending strategies that are complementary to its direct residential real estate investment business. These strategies include lending to residential real estate developers and long-term investors.
The real estate debt strategy is run by Mikko Syrjänen with Matthew Pritchard (Portfolio Manager for Europe) and Travis Masters (Portfolio Manager for the United States). Acknowledging the importance of direct loan sourcing Aalto has built dedicated origination both in Europe and the US where Stephen Eighteen and Derrick Land head up the origination activities respectively.
Aalto considers 'point in time' investments on a case by case basis across asset classes, geographies and investment strategies. We constantly look for investment opportunities which we believe offer attractive risk-reward characteristics.
Aalto is opportunistic when considering new investment strategies and from time to time execute 'point in time' strategies on behalf of a close group of institutional investors including pension funds, insurance companies and family offices. Many of these opportunities are in dislocated 'real assets' or businesses where we invest via owning the asset outright or via owning debt secured by the asset.
Man GPM Aalto Insights
Periodic investment insights relating to our investment activity in direct real estate and real estate debt.
Defensive senior debt strategies in a zero yield environment
In the low yield environment investors currently face, real estate debt can provide the income that has been lost from other asset classes.
Mikko Syrjänen
The role of real estate in institutional portfolios
Why institutional investors should give greater consideration to real estate allocations in their portfolios.
Mikko Syrjänen
Market background and outlook for 2017
Between July 2006 and mid-2012, US residential real estate experienced its deepest nationwide crisis on record. Although it has since recovered, the fallout from the crisis is still throwing up opportunities for disciplined investors with the processes.
Mikko Syrjänen
Investment Approach
We adopt the same approach to investments across real asset classes, as illustrated below.
Client Approach
We seek to build long-lasting trusted investment relationships with a limited number of key clients. Our current investor base is divided between pension funds, insurance companies and private family offices. We believe that our firm is an ideal partner to those investors who have chosen to make direct investments and co-investments in value oriented strategies.
Our in-house expertise in asset sourcing, due diligence, deal execution and ongoing asset management is tailored to complement our clients' own resources. We expect our investors to be inquisitive and active in their management style and in their relationship with Aalto. Investor requests and periodic reporting are overseen by the Client Portfolio Management team who work in partnership with Man’s institutional sales and client operations teams and we pride ourselves in our regular, open and transparent investor dialogue.
Responsible Investment
At Aalto we believe that understanding and managing environmental, social and governance ('ESG') issues across our investments is an essential part of our long-term, fundamental investment approach. As such, responsible investing is integrated across our investment teams and strategies and a part of our day-to-day investment evaluation process. To ensure that our ESG initiatives change as the investing landscape changes and that such initiatives and policies are effective and implemented, we have created a central ESG oversight function.
In our investment strategies, we target and implement a range of bespoke ESG initiatives. In our real estate businesses (both direct and debt) where possible we aim to improve or encourage our construction partners to raise the energy efficiency of the homes/commercial space, reduce waste, improve health and safety practices and consider a more ethical supply chain management.