Commercial real estate giant Hines and the National Pension Service of Korea have formed a $1.5B equity joint venture to pursue infill development projects in various property sectors worldwide. The partners say that 20% of the venture is committed to development in North America and the Asia-Pacific region, though they didn't specify any markets.

They did say that the investments will be in high-barrier-to-entry markets and will include mixed-use, residential, office and logistics projects.

NPS is one of the world's largest pension funds, with about $672B in assets under management. It is involved in a number of CRE investment partnerships, including recently formed ones with the German financial services company Allianz and Dutch pension fund manager APG.

Houston-based Hines has 165 developments underway around the world. Altogether, the company has about $144.1B of assets under management, including $68.6B for which Hines provides third-party services.

The partners are no strangers to each other. In May, the two joined forces to acquire a 49.5% interest in One Madison Avenue from SL Green Realty Corp., committing $492.2M in equity to the project. SL Green and Hines are co-developing the 1.4M SF project, which began construction in November.

The deal marked one of the largest U.S. investment sales in the U.S. in Q2 2020, as many such deals were put on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic, The Real Deal reports.

During the year ending with the second quarter of 2020, South Korea was the third leading source of cross-border equity investment in American CRE, according to TRD, citing Real Capital Analytics data. Only Canada and Germany supplied more equity.

Hines and NPS were also equity partners with SL Green on the One Vanderbilt project in Manhattan, which opened in September.