GLOBAL – Swiss investment manager Partners Group is teaming up with Japan’s Mizuho Financial Group to offer private equity and infrastructure products to the pensions market in Japan.

Citing growing demand from Japanese pension funds for access to private market investments, Partners Group said it signed the agreement with the Japanese financial holding group on 9 January.

Steffen Meister, partner and executive member of the firm’s board of directors, said: “We are very excited to partner with Mizuho Financial Group, one of Japan’s most respected and best-known financial institutions, to meet the growing demand for private equity and infrastructure investment opportunities seen from the country’s pension funds.”

The two businesses formed a strong team together, he said, and would set up a successful range of private markets products.

Partners Group said the deal was a business alliance agreement with Mizuho Financial Group and its subsidiary Mizuho Trust & Banking.

Mizuho Trust provides pension trust and asset management.

Under the terms of the pact, Mizuho Trust and Partners Group will jointly develop and distribute certain global private equity and infrastructure products within Japan’s pension market, the Swiss firm said.

It said this would be the first time Mizuho offered global, private market investment products to its Japanese pension fund client base.

The agreement gives MFG and Mizuho Trust select distribution rights for Partners Group’s global private equity and infrastructure funds, the firm said.

In addition to the stated product marketing, Mizuho Trust and Partners Group also intend to look at new opportunities to work together and develop products for Japanese institutional investors within global private market investment.