Fundraising

Canada Pension Plan launches Mumbai office

Having already invested more than $2bn in the country, CPPIB is establishing a local presence with the opening of a new outpost in India’s financial capital.

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The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), administrator to the Canada Pension Plan, is opening an office in Mumbai to pursue fresh investment opportunities.

“As the second office in the region, we view the Mumbai office as very much part of our overall footprint in the Asia-Pacific region,” a CPPIB spokesperson told Infrastructure Investor.

“Each of our investment leads in Mumbai will run their respective investment groups with close coordination with our regional hub in Hong Kong,” the spokesperson added, declining to identify the investment leads.

Located in the financial hub of the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), CPPIB’s investment office in Mumbai currently has a staff of four that will increase “in line with our investment programmes in the market,” the spokesperson said.

Developing on-the-ground presence will allow CPPIB to source and manage complex, sizeable assets, the organisation said in a statement. According to their spokesperson, CPPIB has hired people in India with local expertise. “As has occurred in our other international offices, we hope to have a mix of employees from Canada, India and elsewhere in the office as we increase the number of employees.”

The pension fund began investing in India in 2010 and now has a $2 billion portfolio in the country. Its first investments were in private equity, followed by real estate. In June 2014, CPPIB made its first investment in infrastructure, investing $332 million in L&T Infrastructure Development Projects Limited (L&T IDPL), a subsidiary of Indian construction and engineering company Larsen & Toubro. The investment was made by CPPIB’s wholly-owned subsidiary CPP Investment Board Singaporean Holdings I (CPPIBSH).

The spokesperson did not specify whether CPPIB's Indian-based team would focus on any particular asset classes.

Headquartered in Toronto, CPPIB is an investment management organisation that invests the funds not needed by the Canada Pension Plan to pay current benefits on behalf of 18 million Canadian contributors and beneficiaries.

As of June 30, 2015, the CPP Fund totalled C$268.6 billion (€183.5 billion; $202.7 billion), with infrastructure representing 5.6 percent of the overall portfolio.