T Rowe Price, the Baltimore-based global investment managers, is to expand its SICAV range with the launch of a global real estate strategy. The strategy will be available to investors through a segregated account and the company’s Luxembourg-domiciled SICAV range.

"Investing in real estate in global markets offers investors a chance to significantly diversify their portfolios. Local real estate supply and demand fundamentals are usually particular to a region and can have little correlation with property fundamentals in other countries.

"Income producing real estate companies in the US, Hong Kong, Japan, UK and Australia will be a large focus of the strategy. Long-term leases may offer better protection from income decreases in recessions, while they are able to prosper from pricing power when leases renew during strong economies,” said David Lee, vice president and portfolio manager at T Rowe Price.

The Global Real Estate Securities Fund’s objective is to provide long-term total return growth through investments primarily in a diversified, global portfolio of real estate securities.

The portfolio may include investments in real estate operating companies, real estate investment trusts, as well as in the transferable equity and equity-related securities of companies committing the predominant part of their assets to owning, operating, managing, financing, servicing, developing, acquiring or selling real estate. The strategy will not directly own any real estate.

The fund is currently approved for distribution in Luxembourg and is awaiting approval in the other jurisdictions in which the SICAV is registered.

T Rowe Price has £193.6 billion ($345 billion) in assets under management as at 30 September 2008.

The fund is a sub-fund of the T Rowe Price Funds SICAV, a Luxembourg domiciled SICAV which qualifies as an undertaking for UCITS.