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The FT fails to mention this morning that former City golden girl Robin Saunders (pictured) is involved in a deal that will see Tesco insert £400m of its stores into a new fund called Index Linked Properties. Even so, the principle (as well as the principal) behind the fund sounds interesting.

Saunders is the photogenic American who used to make the headlines at WestLB bank before leaving after a tiff in 2003. In 2005 she set up a £1b property fund with dealmaker Paul Bloomfield. Not sure what happened to that. But Saunders runs Clearbrook Capital out of  25, Grosvenor Street. Last summer she announced the firm had a £1b to spend.

The FT says Clearbrook and DTZ are to manage Index Linked Properties: a name which betrays the cautious thinking behind the fund. It will be a closed-end Jersey investment company which will only add properties with index-linked leases to the £400m of stock that Tesco are contributing by way of sale and leaseback.

What can go wrong? Finding more of the same stock perhaps? There are now dozens of nascent property funds, many given to empty boasting of having £1b of "firepower". But here we have a fund that appears to have bagged £400m of safe and solid stock and only wants more of the same. Sounds like a buy.

The most interesting story of the day is not in the papers, but on Bloomberg. EG's former finance editor Chris Bourke says RBS is going to announce the closure of the department that doled out cash to those investing in non-UK commercial property - and dispose of the £33 billion loan book. About £22b of these loans lie in Western Europe, much of the rest is in North America. 

The pull out will be conducted in as slow and seemly a manner as RBS can muster - they say. But this is a repetition of the line the bank is taking with its £58b UK commercial property loan book, which is staying open, even as the pages are starting to be ripped out. The line is: "We are in control. We are not panicking. There will be no rushed sales."

This response brings to mind that given by call-girl Mandy Rice-Davies during the Profumo affair trial, when she was told Lord Astor had denied having sex with her: "well, he would wouldn't he?"  

RBS and Lloyds, encumbered with that dreadful HBOS loan book authored by Peter Cummings, are forced sellers, like it or not.  The growing crowd of buyers now circling these loans can smell the blood.  But for the sake of keeping up appearances, nobody likes to say it too plainly. When you hear the phrase, "taking advantage of market conditions" in this context, it really means "let's see if we can screw the banks."

Gerald Parkes resurfaces this morning in the FT.  The former Lehman Brothers fund manager is to join up with Sir John Beckwith, the 62-year-old property investor who made a fortune by selling his property company, London & Edinburgh Trust, for £510m to a very silly Swedish insurance company just before the market crashed in 1990.

Parkes was not one of those who exited 25 Bank Street in Canary Wharf this time last year clutching his personal possessions in a cardboard box. The European real estate funds business remained solvent with $9.4bn of other people's money invested.  Parkes and his colleagues tried for an MBO. It did not work out for the Cambridge-educated fund manager, who is very clever, but prone to letting it show.

                                              25 Bank Street, Canary Wharf

His former colleagues at Lehman are presumably still trying to convince the administrators to let them have the business.  But Parkes exited in May, presumably to fix up a deal with Sir Peter, who's Aim-listed Alpha Fund announced on Friday that perhaps India was not such a wizard idea and that investing in the UK and Europe was now the thing.  

Parkes joined the US bank in 2004 after a short spell at Invesco, which bought out his own business in 2001. Our man will know the whereabouts of a great deal of distressed property from the five years he spent at Lehman Brothers. This could prove quite a profitable pairing.

The squeeze on the fees being earned by property fund managers is amply demonstrated by looking at the commendably detailed results from the ING UK Real Estate Investment Trust published this morning.

The Trust is managed by ING Real Estate Management, who parted company with their head of acquisitions, Nicholas Gill today.  But this close relationship has not prevented the Trustees of the fund negotiating a big reduction in fees.  Instead of getting 0.9% of the gross assets, the manager now gets 1.45% of the net assets plus a performance fee. But they don't have to pay administrative expenses - whatever they are.

This new deal translates into a 30% reduction - or just over £1m a year - prior to the payment of any performance fee says the Trust. This is no doubt the case. But that percentage drop is based on a June 2009 valuation of £357m for the gross assets.

The rush of vulture funds trying to strip the bones from the turkey's who stuffed themselves on real estate in the Great Feeding Frenzy (2004-2007) has become almost unedifying.

But will that stop the rush? Of course not: not a day passes without another "opportunity" fund being launched; many by the same merchant banks, fund managers and promoters who lost clients zillions last time around.

"They all want the same thing" complains our man on the front line. "Prime investment grade property in central London with at least eight years on the lease. Dear God, have they any idea how little of this stuff there is around!"

Can it be long before the virtues of secondary property will become apparent to others besides Nick Leslau, who seems keen to buy the bust Industrious portfolio? Indeed not. This very morning Morgan Jones of Hansteen tells the Daily Telegraph that he has a file "four inches thick" full of sheds to "snap up" with the £194m raised on Aim last month.