SEOUL-Locally based insurance firm Samsung Life has provided $468 million to Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank to invest in core city real estate in the United States and Europe. The bank’s real estate investment management division, RREEF, will handle the distribution.

The move is seen as similar to RREEF last year taking on an $824-million investment into the same markets by Malaysia’s Employees Provident Fund. There has been a push by Asian funds to invest in Western property, such as the National Pension Service of Korea announcing earlier this year a $4-billion plan for property and infrastructure in countries such as the United States.

Niel Thassim, head of RREEF’s Asia Pacific team, said in a statement that the awards show the benefits of having local professionals in the home markets of clients. Thassim’s firm handles money going both ways; with US and European clients investing in Asia and vice-versa. The investment allocations for Samsung will likely be between $200 million to $300 million, reports say.

Thassim’s company executed almost $1 billion in transactions in Asia in 2010, and raised almost $3 billion of new capital from Asian clients, from countries such as Korea, Australia, Japan, China and Hong Kong, to invest around the world.