Birmingham, Bristol and London City airports have reportedly been put up for sale by their Canadian pension fund owner as it looks to cash in on a resurgence in air travel after the pandemic.
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) is said to be in talks over a potential sale of its stakes in the UK airports to minority shareholders. The portfolio, which also includes Copenhagen and Brussels airports, is estimated to be worth more than £10bn.
The minority shareholders have the right of first refusal for 30 days, but the move could prompt those smaller stakeholders to sell up instead.
OTPP, which holds stakes ranging from 25% to 70% in each airport, has started to approach potential outside bidders including the Australian investor Macquarie in case smaller investors decline the offer, according to the Sunday Times, which first reported the sale talks.
Since the Covid pandemic, when travel restrictions grounded planes worldwide, airports have started to recover from the disruption, including Heathrow, which returned to profit in February and hit record weekly passengers in July.
The revival has sparked interest from other investors, including rival Canadian pension funds. PSP Investments, which manages the retirement funds for the Canadian armed forces and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, bought the operator of Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports from Ferrovial and Macquarie in a £1.5bn deal earlier this month.
The UK’s Labour government has been watching foreign investments closely, with hopes of replicating their successes with other projects, and ensuring that UKinvestors take a bigger interest in domestic assets so pensioners reap the benefits of any returns.
The OTTP and PSP are two of Canada’s famed Maple 8 funds, which collectively manage about $2tn (£1.1tn) in taxpayer-backed pension schemes for teachers, municipal employees and healthcare workers. The Maple 8, created after a series of reforms to tackle underfunding in the 1990s, have become well known for investing in infrastructure schemes across the globe, including in the UK.
The UK government is consulting on plans to merge local government retirement schemes and workplace pension programmes into a handful of the country’s own megafunds.
