Ontario Teachers’ Pension Invests $350 Million in Indian Private Credit

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (OTTPB) is investing $350 million in US dollars into performing and distressed private credit in India.

The pension plan hired alternative asset manager Edelweiss Alternate Asset Advisors (EAAA), a subsidiary under Edelweiss Group, to oversee the investment, the fund said last week. EAAA is India’s largest private debt manager with $3 billion in assets under management.

“This partnership will further expand our presence in, and provide additional insights on, the important Indian market,” Gillian Brown, senior managing director of capital markets at Ontario Teachers’, said in a statement.

The US$156.7 billion Ontario Teachers’ pension fund is building credit exposure and betting on India’s long-term growth trajectory. As of fiscal year 2019, the pension plan invested roughly US$11.5 billion into the Asia-Pacific region.

India is looking to position itself as a global manufacturing hub under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Atmanirbhar Bharat” campaign. That’s an economic policy unveiled as part of its coronavirus fiscal package for the nation to become self-reliant. The country wants to be a bigger part of the global economy. Right now, it is the world’s fifth largest economy, behind the US, China, Japan, and Germany.

Investment firm Edelweiss Group has attracted investments in the past from other institutional investors, including pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and Allianz Investment Management, the investment management arm of Allianz Group.

OTTPB has earned a 9.5% annualized return in the nearly three decades since the fund’s founding.