Pension Fund Selects Singapore for Asian Base

Pension Fund Selects Singapore for Asian Base

One of Canada's largest pension funds announced it will open a Singapore office.

Omers, the pension plan for municipal workers in the province of Ontario, Canada, will open an office in Singapore in January 2018. Founded in 1962, Omers is one of Canada’s largest defined benefit pension plans, with more than $85 billion in net assets, as at December 31, 2016.

The new office in Singapore will be located at One Raffles Quay and will be home to investment professionals representing the organization’s deep expertise in capital markets, infrastructure, private equity and real estate. Its work will complement the existing Omers Infrastructure office located in Sydney, Australia.

Asia-Pacific Potential

Bringing the fund to Singapore is part of a multi-year strategy to identify promising investment opportunities in emerging markets. At the end of 2016, the geographic distribution of Omers holdings saw 40 percent of its assets in Canada, 37 percent in the U.S., 17 percent in Europe and 6 percent in other parts of the world.

«We appreciate the many distinct advantages Singapore offers, including the deep expertise of its financial services community, ease of doing business, world-class infrastructure, and connectivity to the rest of Asia,» said Michael Latimer, President and CEO of Omers.

Robust Financial Hub 

The momentum of Singapore as a leading financial hub remains strong. The Lion-City is a key hub to some of the world's largest and most influential sovereign wealth funds. Along with the domestic Singapore fund the Norwegian state-owned investment fund, which recently reached the value of $1 trillion for the first time since its establishment in the 1990s, also has an office in the city-state.

finews.asia reported recently that the Korea Investment Corporation (KIC) had also opened an office in Singapore, its third overseas center. The new Singapore branch is KIC's third international center, following those in New York and London, as the $122 billion sovereign wealth fund continues to expand beyond its home base. KIC will manage assets locally through the Singapore office while focusing on deal-sourcing and building networks in Southeast Asia, India and Oceania.