Wiseman promoted to lead all CPPIB’s investments

The Canadian pension, CPPIB, has promoted its private investments chief to executive vice president in charge of all investments at the fund.

The newly created role, which becomes effective from 1 April, is an attempt by the C$123.8 billion (€83.2 billion; $120.1 billion) pension plan to grow the organisation, a spokeswoman told PERE.

A statement from CPPIB said Wiseman, who joined the pension in 2005 from Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan’s private equity arm, would have overall responsibility for all real estate, private and infrastructure investments as well as public market investments at the pension. He will report directly to CPPIB president and chief executive officer David Denison.

Current senior vice president for real estate, Graeme Eadie, will report to Wiseman. As part of the reshuffle, CPPIB promoted André Bourbonnais as senior vice president in charge of private investments, effective from 1 April. He was previously vice president and head of principal investing at the pension.

Don Raymond, who currently leads CPPIB’s portfolio design and investment research team, was also promoted to senior vice president and chief investment strategist with responsibility for overall fund-level investment policies. He will report to Denison.

In December, CPPIB teamed up with UK property company Hammerson to buy one of Scotland’s largest shopping centre, Silverburn, for £297 million (€333 million; $478 million).

The centre attracted interest from several private equity real estate firms partly because of the potential to add value to the prime Silverburn shopping centre, near Glasgow.

Silverburn was bought out of administration from Lloyds Banking Group after its developers, Retail Property Holdings, struggled to restructure its debt load. The centre was bought for £50 million less than its original development cost in a 50-50 joint venture between Hammerson and CPPIB.

At the time of the deal CPPIB said the net income from the centre would be approximately £17 million in 2010, equivalent to an initial yield of around 6 percent. Hammerson will be managing the property.