The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is investing $200 million in a Swedish company developing and manufacturing lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.
The new funding, via convertible debt, will help finance the development of a planned multi-billion dollar EV battery plant in Quebec. In August, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the Investment Management Corp. of Ontario and the Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System joined forces in a US$1.2 billion funding raise for Northvolt.
“The battery value chain is a high interest sector for [the Caisse] and, with a favourable impact on the energy transition, we believe it will experience strong growth over the next decade, which we expect will benefit our depositors,” said Kim Thomassin, executive vice-president and head of Quebec at the Caisse, in the release.
In other news, the OMERS is closing an offering of U.S. dollar term notes worth US$1 billion.
The notes, which carry a 10-year maturity rate, are priced at a yield of 5.5 per cent. The offering represents the seventh such transaction by the OMERS using U.S. currency. The offering was led by central banks and official institutions (38 per cent) and followed by treasuries and private banks class (36 per cent), asset managers and corporate investors (23 per cent) and pension, insurance and other (two per cent).
Read: OMERS invests $546.8M in sports conglomerate, CPPIB sells stake in German wind farm assets