CalSTRS Announces Real Estate Consultant.

The Townsend Group is Selected to Advise the Pension Fund on Real Estate Investments

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The California State Teachers' Retirement System today announced The Townsend Group as its consultant to advise CalSTRS' Investment Committee on overall real estate investment strategy, policies and practices.

The Townsend Group works for the Investment Committee and with CalSTRS investment staff to monitor and comment on the real estate portfolio performance and policy.

The Cleveland-based Townsend Group provides global property investment counsel to more than 85 clients on both a discretionary and nondiscretionary basis, representing real estate allocations in excess of $80 billion. Their clients include public pension funds, corporations, foundations, endowments, financial institutions and Taft-Hartley plans ranging from $300 million to over $130 billion in total plan assets.

The CalSTRS investment portfolio, at $180 billion, includes a real estate portfolio of $17.3 billion as of Oct. 31, 2007. The CalSTRS real estate portfolio ended the fiscal year, June 30, 2007, with a 32.9 percent return and starts 2008 with a target allocation increased from 9 percent to 11 percent of the portfolio.

The California State Teachers' Retirement System, the second-largest public pension fund in the U.S., administers retirement, disability and survivor benefits for California's 813,000 public school educators and their families from the state's 1,400 school districts, county offices of education and community college districts.