CPPIB
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board
According to Westchester Group founder Murray Wise “as much as $10 billion in institutional capital is searching for a home in U.S. agricultural land," Westchester is majority-owned by TIAA-CREF, one the largest US pension funds.
Calgary, Canada, October 14, 2014 --(PR.com)-- Stephen Johnston, co-founder of Agcapita, commented, "The large amount of capital looking in to the farmland asset class from the sidelines does not surprise us. Farmland is a highly attractive asset class with high Sharpe ratios but at the same time a difficult asset class for most investors to access. There are few managers with full fund life-cycle experience from inception to exit and without an experienced field team to generate deal flow capital can be highly time consuming to deploy. Agcapita is currently on its fifth fund and has already achieved a highly successful exit from its first fund. Farmland continues to gain attention as a useful portfolio addition for pensions and family offices - investors with long-term horizons and who seek stable returns and unique portfolio diversifiers. CPP's investment represents one of the first forays by a large Canadian institutional investor into domestic farmland investments and bodes well for the future of the Canadian market. Agcapita believes that prices of Canada farmland, in particular Saskatchewan farmland, are discounted to world averages for a ton of productive capacity. Part of our investment premise is that this gap will close and with the attention that Canadian farmland is receiving from investors it can obviously happen quite quickly. It is this 'margin of safety' return driver that attracted us to Canada and Saskatchewan in the first place.”
CPPIB among investors lining
up for bankrupt Indiana toll road
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) has teamed up with Ferrovial SA’s toll road operator Cintra and Canadian investment manager Brookfield Asset Management to make an offer, the people said this week.Australia’s Hastings Funds Management has partnered with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers) and Italian toll road operator Autostrade Meridionali SpA, the people said.
Spanish infrastructure operator Abertis Infraestructuras SA has teamed up with Borealis, which is the infrastructure investment arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, the people said. Australian infrastructure fund manager IFM Investors is also leading its own consortium, the people added.
The composition and number of the consortia could still change, the people said. Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) have considered joining the race but have yet to make a decision, some of the people said.
ITR Concession Co LLC, the operator of the toll road that is owned by affiliates of Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd. and Ferrovial, has proposed selling itself to the highest bidder in its Chapter 11 bankruptcy to raise money to pay down $6-billion in debt. Alternatively, the company could pursue a debt restructuring.
CPPIB invests $325 million
in U.S. cancer treatment center operator
(Reuters) - Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), the investment arm of Canada's national pension plan, said on Friday it has invested $325 million in privately held radiation oncology services provider 21st Century Oncology Holdings Inc through purchases of convertible preferred shares.Fort Myers, Florida-based 21st Century operates the world's largest integrated network of cancer treatment centers and affiliated physician practices. It has 179 treatment centers in the United States and in six Latin America countries.The investment will give CPPIB the right to nominate two directors to 21st Century's board. An active global dealmaker, CPPIB manages net assets of C$226.8 billion on behalf of the Canada Pension Plan.
Alibaba and CPPIB
Canadian pensioners will no doubt be pleased by the news that the CPP Investment Board stands to make a tidy return on its investment in China’s e-retail giant Alibaba, which made its debut on the NYSE on Friday. Its initial $160-million investment is now worth many times that, even before the IPO lifts off. So will the CPPIB look to boost its stake to realize even greater gains? The fund is keeping mum for now, writes Boyd Erman in Streetwise, where he delves into its position and attempts to parse out how it may move next.
MONTREAL - WSP Global Inc. (TSX:WSP) has agreed to buy Parsons Brinckerhoff in a US$1.35-billion cash deal that will nearly double the size of the Montreal-based engineering consulting company.WSP announced Wednesday that it plans to become a global professional services firm with about 31,000 employees after adding about 13,500 employees from Parsons Brinckerhoff, once the deal closes.
Parsons Brinckerhoff's expertise in transportation engineering, particularly in the United States, will complement WSP's focus on buildings. It will also expand WSP's presence in a number of areas of the world, the company said.
"We are pleased to be joining forces with a firm of Parsons Brinckerhoff's long-standing reputation and know-how as we expect this transaction to create an industry leader with the ability to deliver more expertise and services to our client base across the world," said Pierre Shoiry, WSP's president and chief executive officer.
Two of Canada's largest pension funds, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Quebec-based Caisse de depot, will provide some of the financial backing required to pay for the acquisition.
WSP has arranged to sell at least $502 million of equity through a public offering. In addition, it will also sell at least $400 million of equity in a private offering to the CPPIB and Caisse, which are already shareholders. Both the public and private offerings could be increased under certain conditions.
WSP has also arranged for US$800 million of credit.
Stake in Cheesegrater pays off for Oxford Properties
In 2013 $35-billion worth of London commercial real estate changed hands, according to CBRE Global Research and Consulting, surpassing a record $32-billion in 2007. Foreign buyers made up 72 per cent of those transactions, and some 35 nations have entered the market, according to Deloitte’s real estate team. There is high demand for that space on the rental side, too. In a recent analysis of the office market, CBRE reports a third quarterly decline in vacancy rates in central London in a row. Prime space is now in very short supply. The most recent quarterly report on office properties by Knight Frank shows a 9-per-cent hike in prime office rents in the City and 8 per cent in the West End.
Not all of the opportunity is in London’s financial district. “We did have some earlier investments in The City, but we exited just over a year ago,” says Andrea Orlandi, head of real estate investments, Europe, for Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), which entered the market in 2008.
The crown corporation expanded last year into other areas of London, particularly the West End, in a joint venture with Hermes Real Estate Investment Management Ltd. The large British pension fund, Mr. Orlandi says, has been able to pick out smaller properties CPPIB may have overlooked.
“It’s really a value-add strategy that extends itself across London,” he says of CPPIB’s $314-million half-stake in eight West End office buildings owned jointly with Hermes. “The City is a more cyclical market,” he says, “The West End tends to show more growth in a secular fashion, let’s say, and a little bit more supply constraints.”
Moving forward, the more than $3-billion CPPIB has invested in Britain will be directed to deals with Hermes in London’s South Bank and the city’s eastern sector. It is also about to realize a new $1.3-billion development in partnership with Land Securities that will make over 5.5 acres near the West End Victoria underground station by 2016. The ambitious design features 480,000 square feet of office space, as well as retail, restaurants and 170 luxury modern apartments.
Expo Real: London market near ‘peak’
– IP Real Estate panel
Kolb, director of European real estate investments, said the CND230bn (€154bn) Canadian institution was “not investing in London as aggressively as it used to” and is focusing more on “stock selection”.
He added: “For a large Canadian pension plan, London is an obvious place to invest in, with high quality professional infrastructure and tax as a positive feature – we have been invested since 2005.”
Kolb remarked that trophy buildings such as the Gherkin were being sold in 2007 at the top of the market at 4.3% yields and this was happening this year. But he said he did not want to guess whether the market had reached a peak again.
He observed a “secular change” in London market over the past seven years, as the city has “grown in stature as a global investment destination”. There is now “more equity on the planet chasing real estate” which means yields will be fundamentally lower than they used to be, he said.
S'pore is top foreign investor in Aussie commercial property: Report
The report noted that Australia represented 5 per cent of global property turnover over the past three years - well above the country's gross domestic product weighting of 2 per cent. This has been driven to a large extent by foreign capital, with Australia reaping more cross-border investment than any other Asia-Pacific market between 2012 and 2014, said CBRE.
"Australia has attracted an above-average share of capital primarily due to firm and stable economic conditions, which have supported a higher interest rate and yield environment in comparison with other markets globally," said CBRE's head of research for Australia, Mr Stephen McNabb.
Foreign investors have included large global institutions and sovereign wealth funds like Singapore's GIC, the National Pension Scheme from South Korea, Germany's Real IS, Blackstone from the US and Canada's CPPIB.
Of the A$18.8 billion of net foreign investment, 68 per cent was for office property, 29 per cent for retail and 3 per cent for industrial assets. Foreign capital into Australia has been taking on an increasingly Asian slant, the report noted. From 2010 to 2012, about two-thirds of foreign investors were from outside Asia-Pacific. This situation reversed from last year. In total, Australia attracted about 12 per cent of Asian outbound capital last year and in the first half of this year.
Neiman Marcus swings to Q4 loss
Neiman Marcus was bought out by Ares Management and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) in October last year in a deal worth ..
Macquarie, Orix among suitors for $5 billion Awas aircraft portfolio - sources
Another Dublin-based aircraft leasing firm that has been exploring a sale, Avolon, has also attracted Asian interest. China's sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp, teamed up with state-owned aerospace and defence company, Aviation Industry Corporation of China, are in talks to buy Avolon, Reuters previously reported.
Terra Firma bought Awas from Morgan Stanley in 2006 for $2.5 billion and a year later acquired rival Pegasus for $5.2 billion, merging the groups to create the world's third-largest plane lessor.
For Terra Firma, which is run by British financier Guy Hands, Awas is one of its largest investments. CPPIB, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, also owns a significant minority stake.
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In this BLOG we will look at pensions and their impact on what are called Public Private Partnerships or P3’s. IT will also deal with other pension matters, such as Defined Contribution Plans (DC) vs Defined Benefit (DB) PLANS, the weakness in private plans, the need for pension reform in public pensions to have shareholder rights, directorships and ethical investment directives and policies.
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