Move over Ottawa: The U.K. is courting Canada's big pensions, too
The Canadian government isn’t the only one looking to tap into billions of dollars invested by the country’s largest pensions.
Officials from the United Kingdom have been making the rounds in Canada this month, talking to executives at the Maple Eight, a group of major pension investment organizations that includes the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.
On their agenda is an ambitious plan being pursued by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s new Labour government, which has vowed to improve the country’s transportation and infrastructure systems, to build more homes, and to move forward on the energy transition away from carbon-based fuels.
A new £7.3bn National Wealth Fund has been created to help meet these goals, with hopes of tapping into institutional funds both at home and abroad to tackle projects highlighted by Britain’s national infrastructure commission.
“We’ve got a big pipeline,” said Ceri Smith, director general of strategy and investment at the U.K.’s Department for Business and Trade, whose pitch was made to Canada’s largest pensions during stops in Toronto and Montreal. “We have literally tens of billions of pounds of future demand in order to do the transition, but also to renew infrastructure in the U.K.”
Britain has underinvested in infrastructure, with investment levels the lowest among G7 countries over recent decades, Smith said, and this is “something the new government is absolutely determined to address.”
And that’s where Canada’s largest institutional investors come in.
Like the Canadian government, the U.K. is hoping that the funding required for such large-scale projects will come not only from government coffers
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