OMERS Sells 11 Fund Investments to AXA PE

OMERS Private Equity announced today an agreement with AXA Private Equity to sell an OMERS portfolio of 11 private fund investments. The purchase agreement costs AXA a total of $850 million USD and the potfolio is made up of predominately North American and Global funds.

“This transaction is consistent with OMERS strategic shift towards direct investing,” said Paul Renaud, CEO, OMERS Private Equity.

OMERS has already made some investment efforts for its new strategy focus such as the investment of $20 million in Canadian social media software provider HootSuite and its acquisition of UK-based Lifeways.  

SEE RELATED STORIES FROM THE WDM CONTENT NETWORK:

• Hootsuite Receives 20 Million Investment from OMERS
• OMERS Acquires UK-Based Lifeways

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AXA Private Equity entered into the agreement in an effort to build its secondary funds strategy which will “offer liquidity to large institutions looking to monetize their private equity investments”. This strategy also led AXA to acquire $1.7 billion USD of private equity assets from Citigroup and the acquisition of $740 million USD of private equity assets from Barclays in June 2011.

“This is a large and significant transaction where we have excellent visibility on the assets, especially given that we are an existing investor in many of the funds,” said Benoit Verbrugghe, Senior Managing Director and Head of North America, AXA Private Equity. “Having an international team with global reach gives us excellent perspective on pricing and quality, allowing us to be opportunistic on behalf of our investors and reinforce our strategy of buying excellent quality assets. It enables us to deliver a global solution to the seller in an efficient and discreet manner.”