Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is retooling its leadership team that controls investments in sought after alternative asset classes as a prominent executive exits.Gunnar Pippel/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is retooling its leadership team that controls investments in sought-after alternative asset classes as a prominent executive exits.
The country's largest pension fund said Monday that it would put its infrastructure, real estate and agriculture investment groups together under the banner Real Asset Investments, separate from other private investments. Leading the Real Assets department will be Graeme Eadie, who has been with the fund for more than a decade and had been global head of real estate investments.
The shuffle comes as these hard-asset classes have become more attractive to institutional money managers worldwide. Low interest rates and unsteady equity markets have pushed more capital towards the more predictable and attractive returns these asset classes can provide, making deals more competitive around the world.
The thinking on grouping together several asset classes focused on tangible investments such as buildings and farmland is to strengthen CPPIB's total portfolio view, where it focuses on diversifying its investments by risk-and-return streams, rather than focusing on specific asset classes.
This will also be the last week at CPPIB for Mark Jenkins, who will leave the role of global head of private investments to take on a senior leadership role at a global asset management firm.
Mr. Jenkins, who joined CPPIB in 2008, had overseen natural resources and infrastructure in his role, as well as the direct private-investments program, including private equity and principal credit investments. He rose to this prominent position at the pension fund in early 2015 when he replaced André Bourbonnais, who left to become CEO of the Public Sector Pension Investment Board.
Since then, Mr. Jenkins has worked on some significant transactions for CPPIB, including the $5.3-billion privatization of technology and data company Informatica Corp. alongside a partner investor, and last year's multibillion deal for General Electric Co.'s private-equity lending arm, Antares Capital.
In his role at The Carlyle Group in New York, Mr. Jenkins will take on a newly created position of head of global credit. Carlyle highlighted Mr. Jenkins' leadership of the Antares deal and that he "built and oversaw the principal credit investments group, the multistrategy credit investment platform at CPPIB" in a press release about the hire. He starts at the end of September.
CPPIB is promoting Shane Feeney to global head of private investments, and said Mr. Feeney will be a part of the senior management team. This group invests in a range of equity and credit investments including the fund's direct private-equity stakes, credit assets and natural resource investments. Mr. Feeney had been head of direct private equity for CPPIB.
Ryan Selwood, who has been with CPPIB for about 10 years, will step in as head of direct private equity. He had held a managing director role within the private-equity group previously.
Both Mr. Selwood and Mr. Feeney will take on their new roles immediately.
This is CPPIB's second notable reorganization by the pension fund's CEO Mark Machin, who took over as leader in June from Mark Wiseman.