Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan has sold a minority interest in the indirect 39% stake in Brussels Airport it acquired in 2011 to Australia's NSW Treasury Corp., or TCorp, and Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund.
A spokeswoman for OTPP said that the C$201.4 billion ($154.3 billion) Toronto-based pension plan remains the single largest shareholder in Brussels Airport but otherwise declined to provide further details regarding the sizes of the stakes sold to TCorp and GPIF or the money OTPP received for them.
A GPIF spokeswoman likewise declined to provide further details beyond saying that GPIF's investment in the airport was implemented by StepStone, one of the ¥161.8 trillion ($1.5 trillion) Tokyo-based fund's infrastructure fund of funds managers.
A spokeswoman for TCorp, a provider of investment management and financial management services to the public sector of the Australian state of New South Wales, couldn't be reached for comment. Sydney-based TCorp has A$107 billion ($73.4 billion) in assets under management.
Selling part of its interest in Brussels Airport to GPIF and TCorp was part of OTPP's strategy "to establish and deepen relationships with like-minded partners who bring new ideas, capital and expertise to the table," Dale Burgess, senior managing director for infrastructure and natural resources at OTPP, said Wednesday in a news release.
As of Sept. 30, alternative investments, including infrastructure, accounted for only 37 basis points of GPIF's portfolio, or roughly ¥600 billion. That leaves the giant Japanese pension fund well short of its asset allocation ceiling for alternatives of 5% of the portfolio, or more than ¥8 trillion.
