GTIS Partners Grabs Top Spots in Prestigious GRESB Sustainability Ranking

GTIS Partners LP (“GTIS”), a real assets investment firm headquartered in New York City, with offices in São Paulo, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Paris and Munich, today announced that the GTIS Brazil Real Estate Fund (“GTIS Brazil Real Estate Fund I”) has been recognized as 2018’s most sustainable private equity real estate investment fund in South America by the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB). This is the fourth year running the fund has clinched the top ranking.

GTIS Brazil Real Estate Funds II and III took second- and third-place honors, respectively, matching the funds’ 2017 survey rankings.

“Our across-the-board top-place rankings are a testament to the day-in, day-out efforts of the entire GTIS Brazil team, who’ve incorporated environmental, social and governance principles into their investment and management practices,” said Josh Pristaw, Senior Managing Director, Head of Capital Markets and Co-head of Brazil at GTIS Partners. “What we’re most proud of is that in ‘doing well while doing good,’ we’re generating value for our clients and other stakeholders while creating tangible benefits for the environment and society as a whole.”

Pristaw noted that GTIS is continually looking to build on its ESG efforts and has put into place detailed plans to focus specifically on the areas of building assessments, data management, and tenant engagement.

“We are very honored by this recognition,” said João Teixeira, Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of the Brazil Office at GTIS Partners. “Commitment to the principles of ESG is part of who we are as an organization. It helps provide a roadmap for the betterment of our local communities, no matter where we operate.”

In an ongoing effort to meet and exceed global ESG standards, GTIS created a sustainability committee, which ensures best practices are utilized at real estate projects owned by the funds. The committee meets quarterly and comprises senior GTIS professionals focused on Brazil acquisitions, asset management, legal, operations, and capital markets functions. The firm has also incorporated ESG into its annual employee evaluation process for all offices since 2016.

GTIS Partners has been actively investing in Brazil real estate since 2005, making it one of the first to recognize the potential of the country’s real estate markets. As one of the largest foreign real estate investors in Brazil, it has invested more than R$5 billion of investor equity commitments for its Brazil platform.

Last month, GTIS Partners announced its expansion into infrastructure investment in Brazil, and the simultaneous hire of Eduardo Klepacz, formerly CEO of Cubico Brazil, one of the country’s largest renewable energy generators, to head GTIS’ new São Paulo-based infrastructure investment team.

“We view the expansion into renewable energy generation as another strong commitment on behalf of GTIS to ESG. We look forward to one day supplying our real estate projects and our real estate tenants with low cost, renewable energy,” said Klepacz.

Added Dan Winters, GRESB’s Head of the Americas: “GTIS Partners continues to outperform its peers and has once again received the top three rankings in South America in the GRESB 2018 results. With seven consecutive years of benchmarking their ESG performance, GTIS has proven to be an industry leader making outstanding progress with its sustainability programs, and continues to set the bar higher for the sector."

Turning to the U.S., GTIS Partners has for the first time submitted the GRESB survey for its U.S. Property Income Fund (“USPIP”), a vehicle that targets sustainable, long-term dividends with modest leverage. USPIP has been active in the multifamily space, with recent acquisitions of Class A multifamily projects in Dallas and Orlando.

About GRESB

GRESB is an industry-driven organization committed to assessing the sustainability performance of real estate portfolios (public, private and direct) around the world. Their dynamic benchmark is used by institutional investors to engage with their investments with the aim to improve the sustainability performance of their investment portfolio and the global property sector at large. GRESB covers about $18 trillion of institutional capital and 903 property companies and funds across the globe.

The GRESB survey is widely recognized as the most rigorous standard for measuring the sustainability performance of real estate companies and funds, and GRESB participation has become standard practice for most of the world’s fund managers and listed property companies. For more information, please refer to www.GRESB.com.

About GTIS Partners

GTIS Partners is a global real assets investment firm headquartered in New York with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, São Paulo, Brazil, Paris, France and Munich, Germany. GTIS Partners was founded in 2005 and is managed by President Tom Shapiro and Senior Managing Directors Josh Pristaw, Rob Vahradian, Tom Feldstein, João Teixeira, and Amy Boyle. GTIS Partners has 95 employees and approximately $4.7 billion of gross assets under management. The firm pursues opportunistic real asset investments through direct equity investment and lending activities. To date, the firm has committed capital to residential, retail, industrial, office, hotel and mixed-use projects in the U.S. and Brazil, and is among the largest real estate private equity companies in Brazil. For more information, please visit www.gtispartners.com.

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