Dutch, Korean pensions partner for infrastructure/real estate

Dutch pension giant APG is joining forces with the National Pension Service of South Korea (NPS) to invest in international infrastructure and commercial real estate projects. The joint investment enables economies of scale and will lead to providing maximum pension value, said APG officials in a statement, adding that the investment will be a collaboration with a South Korean sector partner that is unknown to APG. APG with €538 billion ($636 billion) in assets manages 75% of its assets internally. Earlier this year, the system entered into a strategic agreement with the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board and South Korean REIT provider ESR to set up a $1 billion joint venture to invest in and develop an industrial and warehouse logistics portfolio in Seoul and Busan metropolitan areas. The $600 billion South Korean National Pension Service has the expectation to grow to $1 trillion in the near future. NPS and APG cooperated in two major investments this year. In April, they acquired a share in the toll road operation Brisa and another more recent investment in Scape Australia, a company providing student housing in Australia. “A collaboration with like-minded peers, such as NPS, ensures attractive investment returns for APG and our customers in pension funds and participants,” said Ronald Wuijster, member of the board of directors and responsible for asset management. “By cooperating, both parties gain access to new attractive investment opportunities. Investments that are more difficult to realize by APG independently and at higher costs. The investment structure allows both APG and NPS to have greater influence and voting rights in the business operations. According to Wuijster, this allows for AGP to bring up ambitions in the field of sustainability even more assertively. Lastly, he added that the expectation is for APG to enter into more of these types of partnerships down the road. The knowledge exchange in particular is a key aspect of the deal with NPS. “We will utilize each other’s expertise in the time to come,” Wuijster added. “In this context, you should think about, for instance, the temporary exchange of investment experts.”

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