One of the most respected figures in the global institutional real estate industry, Patrick Kanters is managing director of global real estate and infrastructure at the Netherlands’ largest pensions investment firm APG Asset Management. He has contributed tirelessly to pushing the sector to the next level of professionalism, sustainability and industry best practice.

Among his greatest achievements since joining APG from ING Real Estate in 2005 has been his commitment to promoting the principles of sustainability within APG’s own real estate portfolios and within the industry at large. He was among the innovators of the influential Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) survey, the benchmarking initiative developed jointly in 2009 by APG, Maastricht University, PGGM and USS.

GRESB has become the industry standard in measuring on behalf of 50 or so of the world’s leading institutional investors, with a combined asset base totalling some €5.5trn, the environmentally and socially responsible performance of some 640 property funds and more than 1,000 REITs. GRESB is used to rate APG’s own performance.

With 10% of its €424bn asset base devoted to real estate, APG is one of the world’s largest real estate investors and is aware of the responsibility its influence carries globally. With real estate accounting for some 40% of the EU’s carbon emissions, Kanters ensures APG’s real estate teams actively engage with its investments and assess new opportunities against strict ESG criteria, helping shape the long-term nature of the industry and managing climate change. APG, under Kanters’s direction, was a leading player in the creation of a new industry lobbying body for the institutional infrastructure sector. APG is joined in the Global Infrastructure Investor Association (GIAA) by 18 other major real assets investors, with combined infrastructure assets under management totalling some €177bn, including fellow Dutch pensions manager PGGM and Canadian peers Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and PSP Investments. GIIA seeks to be the public voice for investors in unlisted infrastructure and to build an increased understanding of long-term infrastructure investments as well as the growing sector’s advocate, engaging directly with governments, supranational bodies and policy makers to develop and maintain supportive regulatory environments and reduce barriers to investing in infrastructure globally.

But Kanters’s commitment to real estate goes beyond APG. Since June 2012, he has also been chairman of INREV, the European association for Investors in Non-Listed Real Estate Vehicles. During his chairmanship, INREV has developed innovative indices and measurement tools such as the online Sustainability Library, an interactive platform for INREV members to share knowledge, promote publications, learn from and be inspired by peers and make experiences and achievements publicly available within the industry. INREV entered into partnership with fellow real estate industry bodies, ANREV, NCREIF and PREA, to create a set of global guidelines to help investors and asset managers alike better understand the vagaries of real estate investment markets around the world and constitutes the first major step towards truly developing a set of globally consistent market practices.

Kanters also sits on the board of EPRA, Europe’s public real estate industry’s representative body that, like INREV, promotes best practice and guidelines as well as managing a set of indices for listed real estate funds and companies.