'What the government is doing around infrastructure investment supported our decision to make Canada a priority,' Ken Luce, IFM’s Canadian-based executive director, said.Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail
One of Australia’s largest infrastructure investors is expanding in Canada as the federal government moves to attract more foreign capital into nation-building projects.
Melbourne-based fund manager IFM Investors is opening an office in Toronto on Tuesday as part of a strategy to boost its $2.1-billion Canadian portfolio, which is made up of a Vancouver container port and commercial heating and cooling service Enwave Energy Corp.
IFM oversees $242-billion on behalf of more 800 institutional clients, mainly pension plans, foundations and insurers. The fund manager’s clients include 200 Canadian investors who have committed $14.4-billion.
“We see opportunities to build our investments in a country with a dynamic infrastructure landscape,” IFM’s Canadian-based executive director Ken Luce said in an interview on Friday.
IFM has teams in 13 offices around the world, including New York and Houston. The fund manager decided to open a Toronto office prior to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s election in April and the government’s subsequent moves to speed up infrastructure projects and lure foreign capital.
However, Mr. Luce said: “What the government is doing around infrastructure investment supported our decision to make Canada a priority.”
Canada’s openness to foreign investment catching investors’ attention, Swedish fund manager says
In Canada, IFM will focus on investments in sectors such as energy – including renewable power and liquefied natural gas networks – transport, social infrastructure and digital infrastructure such as data storage centres.
IFM owns stakes in data centre operators Switch Inc., based in Las Vegas, and Switzerland’s Green Group AG. Mr. Luce said the fund manager is open to investments in Canadian data centres.
In 2021, IFM partnered with Deutsche Telekom on its fibre-to-the-home network. Canadian telecoms are actively courting institutional investors in their digital infrastructure, such as wireless backhaul networks and cellphone towers.
In Australia and Europe, the fund manager owns significant stakes in airports, assets the Canadian government has considered selling in the past.
IFM plans to initially hire six to eight professionals in Toronto. Globally, the fund manager has approximately 900 employees, including 125 U.S. staff. Mr. Luce said IFM plans to continue partnering with domestic infrastructure investors, such as pension fund managers, as it expands in Canada.
Launched in 1990, IFM is owned by 15 Australian pension funds and one British pension fund. The fund manager’s roots are in the union-run pension plans. IFM specializes in infrastructure, debt and private-equity investments.
IFM’s ownership structure allows it to make generational commitments to infrastructure, which sets it apart from private-equity funds that typically need to cash out with 10 years of investing.
In 2018, IFM partnered with the British Columbia Investment Management Corp. and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan to share ownership of GCT Global Container Terminals Inc., which handles approximately 70 per cent of the containers moving through the port of Vancouver.
Four years ago, IFM and Ontario Teachers’ paid $2.8-billion to acquire Enwave from Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP. Since then, Enwave has expanded a cooling network that serves more than 100 buildings in downtown Toronto and built facilities in Windsor, London, Markham and Charlottetown.
In last month’s federal budget, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne set a goal of generating $500-billion in private-sector investing in the economy over the next five years. In late November, the Prime Minister led a mission to the United Arab Emirates that led to pledges of up to $70-billion of investments in Canada, including a $1-billion commitment to critical mineral processing.