Top Canadian pension funds CDPQ and OMERS Infrastructure are betting big on the rapid urbanisation and growth of the middle class in Southeast Asia and India as they seek opportunities for portfolio diversification.
Speaking at DealStreetAsia’s Asia PE-VC Summit 2021, CDPQ’s Leong Wai Leng and OMERS’ Prateek Maheshwari noted increasing allocation to the region.
“What we’re trying to do is seek diversification, and if you look at our peers and ourselves, [we are] diversifying across asset classes, and across the region,” said Leong, managing director at CDPQ and regional head of Asia Pacific.
Maheshwari, OMERS head of Asia infrastructure, pointed to the region’s demographics-driven growth that will drive spending on urban infrastructure and the transition to greener energy. “There is going to be a significant demand for infrastructure investments,” he said. India is a particularly attractive market, Maheshwari added, given how the market has developed over the last decade.
For CDPQ, meanwhile, the key markets of interest in Southeast Asia are Indonesia and Singapore, Leong said. “We find Indonesia to be quite interesting across many asset classes,” Leong said. There are also “pockets of opportunities” in the Philippines, and Vietnam, Leong added.