CPPIB sells 16% stake of Antares to Northleaf

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has sold a 16-per-cent stake in privateequity lender Antares Holdings to Northleaf Capital Partners.

CPPIB purchased Antares from GE Capital for $12 billion in August of 2015, significantly expanding its growing private-debt businesses.

Since then, further investments by the pension fund have contributed to year-over-year increases in Antares’ assets and market share.

A spokesman for CPPIB told the Financial Post the sale of the stake in Antares will create a “strategic” partnership between CPPIB, Antares management and Toronto-based Northleaf that will broaden and further strengthen the Antares platform.

“We cannot emphasize enough that CPPIB is fully committed to its highly strategic long-term investment in Antares and will remain its largest shareholder,” he told the Financial Post.

At the end of last year, CPPIB’s fast-growing Principal Credit Investments unit had assets of $17 billion, up from $8 billion at the end of fiscal 2015, largely due to the Antares acquisition.

The Canadian pension giant, which invests funds not needed to pay current benefits of the Canada Pension Plan, has been one of Northleaf’s largest investment partners for more than 10 years.

The purchase of the equity stake in Antares from CPPIB on Wednesday is part of Northleaf’s launch of a global private-credit program, with more than US$1.4 billion in capital raised from a core group of Canadian pension plans.

Northleaf became an independent global privateequity investment firm in 2009. It was previously a private-equity fund of funds and a co-investment arm of Toronto-Dominion Bank.