Carney's Investment Summit Attracting Global Investors
A multibillion-dollar global investment manager backed by some of Australia’s largest pension funds will be leading a delegation to the Canada Investment Summit this fall, aiming to pour as much as $10 billion into Canadian infrastructure over the next decade if conditions are right.
IFM Investors Pty Ltd. (IFM), which specializes in infrastructure and manages more than $242 billion on behalf of institutional investors, including AustralianSuper and the Australian Retirement Trust, confirmed a delegation will attend the summit to be hosted by the federal government in Toronto on Sept. 14 and 15.
“IFM is coordinating the participation of the Australian Super Funds to the summit,” Gian-Carlo Peressutti, executive director of public affairs at the global asset manager, said in a statement.
Prime Minister Mark Carney met directly with some of Australia’s largest pensions when he travelled to the country in March as part of a wider trip to strengthen trade and alliances with middle powers.
At the same time, the Australian institutional investors signed a sweeping cooperation agreement with nine Canadian pensions, including the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP), which then partnered with the federal government to host the investment summit.
Since then, senior IFM executives have said Australian funds are anxious to beef up an “underweight” investment position in Canada, while echoing Canadian pensions in decrying a long-standing lack of opportunities to invest in the kind of large-scale infrastructure assets they seek globally. They have also cited regulatory “frictions” they hope the Carney government and the provinces will address.
With the first-of-its-kind summit in September, Carney has promised to convene the world’s largest investors, including top CEOs, entrepreneurs and prominent global business leaders, to attract new investment that advances Canada’s nation-building projects in areas such as mining, energy and security while creating jobs and boosting the economy.
His government has pledged to “catalyze” $1 trillion in total investment in Canada over the next five years from public, private and institutional partners. In his first budget last November, his government announced $280-billion worth of capital investments and incentives intended to generate additional investment, including $315 billion in infrastructure alone.
The budget also announced that airport privatization was under consideration, a tantalizing prospect for pension funds that was bolstered by the government’s spring 2026 pledge to create a $25-billion sovereign wealth fund that will be fuelled in part by “asset recycling,” or selling established cash-generating government-owned assets, such as airports, and using the proceeds to pay for priority infrastructure projects.
During Carney’s visit to Australia in the spring, Kyle Mangini, IFM’s global head of infrastructure, said in a statement that the asset manager was prepared to invest up to $10 billion in Canadian assets over the next 10 years under the “right policy settings.”
He also said in the Financial Review on March 4 that Canadian airports meet the size and scale of assets sought, along with toll roads, should they become available, and infrastructure for critical minerals projects such as rail links and power networks.
IFM has made a couple of investments in Canada in recent years, both in partnership with Canadian institutional investors: Enwave Energy Corp. was acquired in 2021 with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and it also took a 37.5 per cent stake in 2018 in Vancouver-based GCT Global Container Terminals, which operates out of West Coast ports and is jointly owned by Teachers’ and British Columbia Investment Management Corp.
IFM opened its first Canadian office last December in Toronto after Carney’s April election victory on a platform of “build baby build” fast-tracked projects and infrastructure investment.
In the Financial Review article, IFM chair Cath Bowtell said Australian pension funds have struggled to find more opportunities to invest in Canada and are eager to work with Canadian governments at the federal and regional levels to eliminate regulatory frictions. She added that policy reform and faster planning approvals could create more opportunities.
“It’s a jurisdiction that we would like to invest more in,” she said. “As they look to private capital, we really want to be at the front of the queue.”
Carney’s government likely hopes others will think similarly. During his trip to Saudi Arabia this month, the first by a Canadian leader in more than a quarter-century, the prime minister told reporters that the Public Investment Fund, the Middle Eastern kingdom’s US$900-billion sovereign wealth vehicle, is among the large investors that will be attending the investment summit he’s hosting in September.
Feschia Gonzales of Benefits and Pensions Monitor also reports that Australian pension funds will bring up to $10 billion to Canadian infrastructure:
IFM Investors will lead a delegation of Australian pension funds to a federal investment summit in Toronto this fall, carrying a mandate from its owners to deploy as much as $10bn in Canadian infrastructure over the next decade if the policy conditions line up.
The Australian manager confirmed to the Financial Post that its delegation will attend the summit the federal government is hosting on September 14 and 15.
“IFM is coordinating the participation of the Australian Super Funds to the summit,” Gian-Carlo Peressutti, IFM’s executive director of public affairs, said in a statement to the outlet.
The $10bn figure comes from Kyle Mangini, IFM’s global head of infrastructure, who said during Prime Minister Mark Carney’s spring visit to Australia that the firm would invest that amount in Canadian assets over 10 years under the “right policy settings.”
IFM manages more than A$230bn for a consortium of industry super funds, and those owners have tapped it to lead the Canadian push.
The mechanism at the centre of the pitch is asset recycling.
Under that model, Peressutti said, a private investor takes over an existing infrastructure asset, adds capital, grows its revenue, and the government either shares in that growth or takes an upfront payment for the right to run the asset over a long term.
The government then redirects that cash to other projects in its pipeline.
In most IFM deals, he added, the government keeps full ownership and leases the asset to a custodian for a fixed period.
Peressutti pointed to Manchester Airports Group in the UK and the Indiana Toll Road in the US as cases where the model works because local stakeholders hold a governance role.
“We view it very much as a partnership, but we are fully cognizant and adherent to the fact that this is and always will be the government’s asset and we are not its owners, we’re its custodians,” he said.
Critics have already labelled the approach a form of privatization as Canada debates whether to open assets such as airports to private investors, and Peressutti rejected the term.
“Our adversaries will throw that word around during the course of the debate that Canada is now having about whether or not this makes sense for assets such as airports. But it’s not a privatization,” he said.
The delegation builds on a memorandum of understanding, formally the CAP Invest Initiative, that nine Australian pension funds and Canada’s Maple Eight signed during Carney’s visit to Australia in March, after the prime minister spent months urging institutional investors to bring capital home.
The Australian funds signed the cooperation agreement with Canadian pensions that include the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, according to the Financial Post, both of which then partnered with Ottawa to host the summit.
Carney has pledged to “catalyze” $1tn in total investment in Canada over five years.
His first budget last November set out $280bn in capital investments and incentives, including $315bn for infrastructure, and flagged airport privatization as under consideration.
In spring 2026, as per the same reporting, his government pledged a $25bn sovereign wealth fund funded partly through asset recycling, or selling established government-owned assets and using the proceeds for priority projects.
IFM has invested in Canada before, each time alongside Canadian institutions.
It acquired Enwave Energy Corp with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan in 2021, the Financial Post reported, and took a 37.5 percent stake in Vancouver’s GCT Global Container Terminals in 2018.
The firm opened its first Canadian office in Toronto last December.
Persuasion is what turns the initiative into real dollars now, Peressutti said, since every party to the MoU must convince the public and the Carney government that the deal holds up.
He named the September summit as the moment that matters.
The government wants concrete deals rather than "a show and tell," he said, calling that push "music to our ears" for IFM.
The Australian superannuation model that IFM’s owners represent is drawing wider interest abroad.
US President Donald Trump ordered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to study the system as US lawmakers weigh retirement reform, Bloomberg reported.
Australia’s model, which requires employers to contribute 12 percent of salaries to privately managed pensions, holds about A$3.1tn and is on pace to become the world’s second-largest retirement plan within a decade.
Slowly but surely, we are getting an idea of who will be attending the Canada Investment Summit in September that Mark Carney's government is putting together.
IFM Investors, one of the world's largest infrastructure investors, led by David Neal and his team, will attend, representing institutional investors, including AustralianSuper and the Australian Retirement Trust.
Representatives from the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia's US$900-billion sovereign wealth fund, will also attend. And I'm certain other big funds will also send a delegation.
Keep in mind, back in March, Canadian and Australian pensions struck the first-of-its-kind cross-border investment pact, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) under the Canadian-Australian Pension Funds Investment Initiative (CAP Invest Initiative). I covered it here.
And in April, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Canada’s first national sovereign wealth fund, calling it the “Canada Strong Fund.”
Last week, I discussed how the Maple 8 funds are well-suited to finance Canada's nuclear ambitions and why Tim Hodgson, Canada’s natural resources minister, is the key person Carney is turning to get these projects going.
Now, it doesn't take a political aficionado to see that Carney's government has nothing in common with his predecessor, and is taking the needed steps to attract foreign investment into Canada and open up opportunities for domestic pension funds to invest in infrastructure projects at home.
Going into the Canada Investment Summit in mid-September, I foresee more key announcements and even more after the summit.
Carney, who led Brookfield's ESG and Impact Fund Investing prior to becoming PM, knows all the key players all over the world.
People wonder why he travels half the time; it's to meet his counterparts and global investment leaders to sell Canada.
These are not relaxing trips; they're packed with back-to-back meetings and in many cases, they're high-stakes meetings.
One thing I'd recommend to Mark Carney is to sit down and do more one-on-one interviews to sell his agenda.
Television commercials are fine but they can't cover much in-depth (a lot of Canadians will tell you they like Carney; he seems "serious," but they don't know much about him).
When you're selling Canada to foreign investors or an agenda to the populace, you need an A1 communications strategy. And that I think needs more work (again, Tim Hodgson is doing most of the heavy lifting there).
Alright, let me end it there.
What a game between Spain and France, so happy to see Spain heading to the World Cup Final.
Below, PM Mark Carney gives an update on the progress his government is delivering (2 weeks ago).
As I said many times, the time for more action, less talk, has come. Hope we see more announcements before the major summit in September.
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