Principal® Real Estate Strategies Score Highly With GRESB for the Sixth Consecutive Year
DES MOINES, Iowa – (BUSINESS WIRE) – Principal® announced today that two of its private equity real estate strategies and a core European real estate strategy managed by Principal Real Estate Investors will be 4-star in 2021 from GRESB, the global ESG benchmark for real estate assets Ratings received. The ratings place all three strategies among the top 40% of GRESB participants worldwide1 and show the long-term commitment of the most important real estate investors to integrate environmental, social and governance standards (ESG) into their investment practices and at the same time positive financial results for clients to achieve .
This is the sixth year in a row that the Core and Core Plus US private real estate equity strategies have received a 4-star rating from GRESB and placed in the top 25 of their peer group.
“Our strong GRESB performance over the past six years demonstrates the success of our ESG program with the funds’ ability to continually adopt new ESG practices and compare well with their peers in the US and Europe,” said Jennifer McConkey, Sr. Director of Operations and Sustainability for Principal Real Estate Investors. “As ESG continues to grow as a critical finance and risk management strategy, we strive to keep abreast of the latest developments in the real estate industry to help our clients achieve positive performance results.”
In total, the principal submitted two US funds and six European funds to participate in GRESB in 2021, six of which were also submitted in 2020. Of the six, four improved their performance in 2021 compared to their 2020 GRESB ratings. In general, this improvement was due to better tenant retention, greater coverage of property data, and verification of utility and greenhouse gas data. In particular, the “G” rating for governance was particularly strong across all eight principal strategies in GRESB’s ESG breakdown.
All eight strategies outperformed the peer average in each rated category for management, including leadership, guidelines, reporting, risk management, and stakeholder engagement. In addition, all strategies for data monitoring and review performed perfectly in the performance category.
The overarching ESG framework for principal real estate investors, the so-called pillars of responsible property investing, helps to demonstrate real estate investments, market resistance, corporate governance and real estate performance. Principal recently incorporated industrial real estate, additional European real estate and lending measures into ESG practices and is currently conducting climate risk assessments at the fund level.
GRESB evaluates and evaluates the ESG performance of real assets worldwide every year. The fund’s total stake rose 24% that year to 1,520. This is the highest percentage increase in the rating since 2012 and the highest increase in totals ever recorded. The benchmark now covers $ 5.7 trillion in assets under management (up from $ 4.8 trillion) and nearly 117,000 individual assets. The increase was mainly driven by Europe, which saw massive growth for the second year in a row and now accounts for almost half of the total benchmark. According to GRESB, the strong sustained growth in Europe is likely to be driven by both investor interest in ESG data and the industry’s focus and attention on new regulations.
For information on the results of GRESB Real Estate 2021, please visit GRESB.com.
1 The GRESB star rating is a relative value that classifies all GRESB participants worldwide, divided into quintiles. Therefore, a GRESB 4-star score indicates a performance within the top 40% of all participants.
About major real estate investors
Principal Real Estate Investors manages or advises $ 98.4 billion in commercial real estate as of September 30, 2021. The company’s real estate expertise includes both public and private equity and debt investments. Principal Real Estate Investors is the dedicated real estate group of Principal Global Investors, a diversified asset management organization and a member of the Principal Financial Group®.
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