The Caisse de dépôt wants to sell one of its largest investments abroad: its more than $1 billion stake in London's Heathrow Airport.
• Also read: The REM and the Quebec tram will have marked the year of the Caisse
• Also read: Deposit Funds: Two Airports That Will Give You Cold Sweats
Spanish group Ferrovial announced earlier this week that three Heathrow shareholders were interested in selling their shares in the airport, although they did not name them.
According to the Financial Times, these are the Caisse, which currently holds 12.6% of the shares in Heathrow, the Singaporean fund GIC (11.2%) and the British investor USS (10%).
It was Ferrovial's decision, announced in November, to sell its 25% stake in Heathrow that prompted the Caisse, GIC and USS to do the same.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport. Photo from Heathrow website
Potential value of $2 billion
The buyers of Ferrovial shares are the French company Ardian (15%) and the Saudi fund PIF (10%). The agreed price is C$4.08 billion for the 25 percent block, giving a potential value of Caisse's investment in Heathrow of $2.06 billion.
In a press release published on Tuesday, Ferrovial noted that the sale of the shares of the Caisse and the two other shareholders constituted a material “condition” to the completion of the transaction. This means that if at least one of the three institutions does not find a buyer, Ferrovial may have to forego selling its shares in Heathrow.
A spokeswoman for the Caisse de dépôt, Kate Monfette, was contacted by Le Journal on Wednesday and declined to comment on the matter.
Record investment at the time
When announced in June 2006, the Caisse's investment in Heathrow's parent company was the largest it had ever made overseas.
The Quebec nest egg, then run by Henri-Paul Rousseau, had paid more than $2.4 billion for 28.9% of the group that oversees Heathrow. The Caisse then gradually reduced its holdings.
Henri-Paul Rousseau when he was head of the Caisse de dépôt etplacement. Archive photo
In its 2022 annual report, the institution put the value of its investment in Heathrow at a range of $1 billion to $1.5 billion.
Heathrow Airport is the second largest airport in the world for international flights after Dubai. In 2023, it welcomed 79.1 million passengers, compared to 61.6 million in 2022 and 80.9 million in 2019.
In 2020, the major hub suffered a loss of $3.5 billion while passenger numbers fell to 22.1 million.
“We regularly ask ourselves the question: Is it still a good investment? And at the moment we want to remain invested in Heathrow,” Caisse infrastructure chief Emmanuel Jaclot told the Journal in 2021.
Can you share information about this story?
Write to us or call us directly at 1 800-63SCOOP.