Canada’s Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) is to source investments – including infrastructure – for Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) and the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ).

GPIF, the world’s largest pension fund, and DBJ have committed an initial $2.5bn (€1.8bn) to OMERS’s Global Strategic Investment Alliance (GSIA) investment programme.

The participation by GPIF and DBJ takes the total capital committed to GSIA to $11.25bn.

Other GSIA members include the Pension Fund Association of Japan and a consortium led by Mitsubishi Corporation.

OMERS has more than CAD65bn (€42.6bn) in net assets and almost 440,000 members.

The move could set a precedent for greater allocation to overseas investments in real assets from Japanese institutional investors.

A recent report by CBRE highlighted the low allocations to real estate among Japanese pension funds.

The report said: “A re-allocation to real estate, both domestic and overseas, combiend with growing pension funds in emerging Asian markets, will have a marked impact on the capacity for Asian institutional cross-regional investment.”

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