Fiera Capital's FRESH Strategy Appoints Mike Weston as Strategic Advisor for £1 Billion UK Single-Family Housing Fund

Fiera Real Estate UK Limited and Packaged Living Limited have appointed Mike Weston as strategic advisor to their jointly managed UK Single-Family Housing strategy, known as FRESH, the firms announced Aug. 27. The move brings more than three decades of pension fund leadership to a vehicle targeting £1 billion in assets under management.

Weston's Background and Role

Weston's career spans senior leadership positions across local government pension schemes, private pension funds, and commercial investment managers. He served as chief executive of LGPS Central from 2019 to 2023, chief executive of the Pensions Infrastructure Platform from 2014 to 2019, and chief investment officer of Daily Mail & General Trust Pensions from 2009 to 2014.

He currently serves as a professional trustee at Pi Partnership, where he chairs the Nuffield Health Pension and Life Assurance Scheme, a hybrid defined benefit and defined contribution plan. He also holds advisory and trustee positions at master trust and UK industry sector pension schemes collectively representing approximately £36 billion in assets on behalf of more than 360,000 scheme members, and serves as chair of trustees for the Institute of Cancer Research Pension Scheme.

As strategic advisor to FRESH, Weston will focus on impact strategy and capital formation as the fund moves to deploy its initial close capital.

"Fiera and Packaged Living have a long-established track record in the living sectors, delivering high-quality, sustainable homes," Weston said. "In FRESH, both teams have a clear focus on addressing a critical shortfall in the UK housing market while offering institutional investors long-term yield."

Fund Structure and Investment Strategy

FRESH is structured as an open-ended, core-plus fund and has completed a first close backed by a group of institutional investors, providing seed capital for immediate deployment. The strategy targets £1 billion in AUM over roughly five years, with a projected portfolio of approximately 3,000 units across around 20 schemes. Target returns are 10 to 12 percent net IRR, driven by annual rental growth and capital appreciation.

The fund invests primarily through forward-funding and forward-commitment agreements with developers and housebuilders, focusing on new-build single-family rental homes in supply-constrained suburban locations. Individual scheme sizes are expected to range from 50 to 200 homes.

FRESH carries the Sustainability Impact label under the UK Sustainable Disclosure Regulations, positioning it as an impact-aligned vehicle for institutional capital. The strategy emphasizes the delivery of professionally managed, sustainable rental homes in markets where housing supply remains constrained relative to demand.

"Mike's excellent knowledge of the UK institutional landscape and governance across major pension schemes will prove invaluable as FRESH moves quickly following its first close, delivering sustainable returns for our investors that set standards in institutional-grade single-family housing," said Charles Allen, head of European real estate at Fiera Real Estate.

Market Context: UK Housing Shortage and Pension Capital

The appointment comes as the UK government has committed to delivering 1.5 million homes over the current parliamentary term, even as construction activity has slowed under cost-push inflation, widening the gap between housing supply and demand. Fiera has framed FRESH as a vehicle designed to bridge that gap using long-duration institutional capital.

UK local government pension schemes are currently estimated to hold a surplus of around £147 billion, coinciding with major pooling reforms that are prompting schemes to reassess how they deploy capital. Single-family rental housing, with its inflation-linked cashflows and local economic impact, has emerged as a candidate asset class for that surplus capital. Weston's appointment formalizes an alignment between FRESH's capital formation objectives and the deployment needs of LGPS pools and similar institutional investors.

"For over thirty years Mike has dedicated his career to delivering positive outcomes for public, private and charity sector pension beneficiaries," said Ed Ellerington, CEO of Packaged Living. "As momentum builds behind FRESH, his counsel will ensure we maximise the socio-economic impact of our portfolio, reflecting the shifting preferences we see among institutional investors."

About the Firms

Fiera Real Estate UK Limited is the European real estate arm of Fiera Capital Corporation, which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker FSZ and is headquartered in Montreal. Fiera Real Estate manages more than USD 8.9 billion of commercial real estate globally and directly manages £2.6 billion of AUM through its European division as of June 30, 2026. The European division was founded in 1992 and is headquartered in London.

Packaged Living is Fiera Real Estate's European rental living arm and acts as investment manager, developer, and operator in the UK and Europe across multi-family, single-family, garden-style, co-living, and flex-living strategies. The firm has developed 3 million square feet of purpose-built housing since its founding in 2018, with a portfolio gross development value of £1.2 billion, representing approximately 4,000 homes, as of June 30, 2026.