Sometimes a marriage is the quickest way into a foreign country, and a new joint venture between TIAA-CREF and Henderson Global Investors is looking to prove just that.

The newly formed TIAA Henderson Global Real Estate (TH Real Estate) consists of TIAA-CREF’s European and Asia Pacific real estate business and Henderson’s European and Asia Pacific real estate operations, and has launched with a combined $22.6 billion in assets under management across 50 funds and mandates. In a concurrent deal, TIAA-CREF also acquired the entirety of Henderson’s U.S. real estate business.

“I think the deal happened because both firms were looking to strengthen their global platform,” explains Geoffrey Dohrmann, founder and CEO of Institutional Real Estate, Inc.