Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan has a taste for boneless wings and grilled stuffed burritos.
Teachers' Private Capital, the private equity arm of the C$140.8 billion (US$129.5 billion) Toronto-based pension fund, invested US$300 million in Flynn Restaurant Group LP, San Francisco, which has 470 Applebee's and 170 Taco Bell franchises in the U.S. and $1.4 billion in sales.
TPC will hold more than 50% of Flynn Restaurant shares.
TPC and Flynn Restaurant Group management bought the stakes in Flynn that were held by GS Capital Partners VI, an investment fund managed by Goldman Sachs & Co., and Weston Presidio V, managed by Weston Presidio.
A predecessor GS Capital Partners fund had been an investor in FRG from 2001 to 2005, and an earlier Weston Presidio fund was an investor from 2005 to 2011.
The latest investment by OTPP values Flynn Restaurant Group at more than US$1 billion.
Ontario Teachers has “access to large amounts of evergreen capital, and they do not face any of the issues related to fund timing that conventional private equity firms face,” said Greg Flynn, FRG chairman and CEO in a news release.
TPC has about C$14.8 billion in assets under management.
