Online magazine Pensions & Investments announced yesterday that California State Teachers' Retirement System is developing a multibillion-dollar global syndicate for infrastructure investing.

Chief Investment Officer Christopher Ailman announced it yesterday at a Washington summit on infrastructure investment.

Mr. Ailman said:

"We are forming a consortium of public pension funds to invest in North America, similar to the IFM Investors model"

Australia-based IFM Investors invests on behalf on institutional investors and is owned by 30 major Australian superannuation funds. It manages an open-end infrastructure fund, IFM Global Infrastructure Fund.

Mr. Ailman was speaking at the Build America Infrastructure Investment Summit, organized by the Department of Treasury to encourage private-sector investment.

Mr. Ailman also said that the infrastructure industry needs to create its own rulemaking board as did the municipal bond issuers, which collaborated on standardized rules.

CalSTRS's total target allocation to infrastructure is $4 billion, of which only $1.25 billion is invested as of June 30, out of $186.6 billion in the total portfolio.

In October 2012, CalSTRS announced a $42.8 million commitment to four California investments:

• The construction of a portion of the Presidio Parkway transportation project in San Francisco.
• The reconstruction of the Long Beach courthouse in Los Angeles County.
• The operation of the gas-fired Crockett power plant near Oakland.
• The operation of the solar-electric Sun-Edison plant in the Sacramento area.

Previously, in February 2012, CalSTRS had awarded IFM Investors an infrastructure mandate up to $500 million to invest in a diversified portfolio of core infrastructure assets in North America and Europe across a range of sectors.