The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has reached a deal to sell half of its shares of a Washington-based energy company to the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
According to the terms of the deal, the CPPIB will sell half of its 31.6 per cent stake in Puget Holdings to the Ontario Teachers’ and the other half to Macquarie Asset Management Inc. Puget Holdings’ primary operating subsidiary, Puget Sound Energy, is Washington’s largest electric and natural gas utility company. It provides more than 1.2 million Washingtonians with electricity and about 900,000 with natural gas.
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The state government of Washington has mandated that utility providers supply only carbon-free electricity by 2045. According to Dale Burgess, the senior managing director of infrastructure and natural resources at the Ontario Teachers’, the investment aligns with the pension plan’s net-zero ambitions.
The Ontario Teachers’ will also acquire a 30 per cent stake of a French insurance broker. The pension fund has joined a consortium to sign a deal with the managers and the majority shareholder of the Siaci Saint Honoré Group, Christian Burros. According to the terms of the agreement, the signatories will create a new independent insurance broker to be based in Europe with worldwide operations.
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The new company will provide employee benefits, international mobility, property, liability, transport, credit and reinsurance brokerage services to the large-, mid-cap and small and medium enterprises market segments. It’s expected to employ close to 5,000 employees based in 40 countries.
As part of the transaction, Charterhouse Capital Partners LLP, which acquired a majority stake in SSHG in 2018, will divest its stake in the business. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2021 and is subject to customary regulatory and anti-trust filings.
In other news, a real estate investment subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is entering a joint venture with a private real estate company.
The new venture, which brings together the Caisse’s subsidiary Ivanhoé Cambridge Inc. and Mount Auburn Multifamily LLC, will aim to provide multifamily home developers access to capital structure. The partnership’s primary target markets include several major metropolitan centres in the southern U.S., as well as in the suburbs of Washington D.C.
Read: PSP invests in telecommunications, CPPIB in biopharmaceuticals