{"id":139468,"date":"2026-07-22T13:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T13:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/139468\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T13:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T13:42:07","slug":"carney-is-serious-about-privatizing-airports-australian-pension-executive-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/139468\/","title":{"rendered":"Carney is serious about privatizing airports, Australian pension executive says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"toronto-airport-gs0722\"<\/a> Governance changes and possibly even legislation would be required to privatize a couple of dozen large airports in Canada, including Toronto Pearson International Airport. (Credit: Handout) <\/p>\n

Mark Carney’s government<\/a> is serious about selling airports<\/a> to private investors and could unveil steps to move in that direction when large fund managers gather in September at his Canada Investment Summit, according to an executive at a multi-billion-dollar Australian infrastructure investor that is keen to buy up to $10 billion of Canadian assets over the next decade. <\/p>\n

“I do think the government can announce some very concrete things that will point the way to absolute investment opportunities,” said Gian-Carlo Peressutti, executive director of public affairs, policy and strategy at IFM Investors, which has more than $250 billion in funds under management and invests for Australia’s largest pension funds<\/a>. <\/p>\n

He said the Sept. 14 to 15 summit, where Carney has pledged to gather the world’s largest investors, would be a logical place to lay out a roadmap for private investment in airports. <\/p>\n

“What we were told was it won’t be weeks, but it won’t be years,” he said, adding that progress has been made since Carney visited Australia in March and met with some of that country’s largest pension funds. “So that seems to fit about right with that kind of a timetable.” <\/p>\n

IFM Investors will lead Australia’s delegation to the summit in Toronto and wants to help move things along by showcasing some of the unique structures its investment teams have used to acquire 17 airports around the world, said Peressutti. Manchester Airports Group in the United Kingdom, for example, is jointly owned by Manchester City Council and funds managed by IFM, a structure that calmed privatization concerns by leaving a stake in public hands. <\/p>\n

“We know that there are a couple of government and quasi-government organizations that have told us they are responsible for submitting options to the prime minister’s office about how this could work,” Peressutti said, adding that his understanding is the government is looking to present more than one potential scenario for structuring the transition to private investment. <\/p>\n

“That tells me that they’re decently far along,” he said. <\/p>\n

Governance changes and possibly even legislation would be required to privatize a couple of dozen large airports, including Toronto Pearson<\/a>, which operate under not-for-profit authorities. And public opinion may be an issue, with a recent Nanos Research Group survey for Bloomberg News showing a slim majority of responses opposed the government’s plan to allow private investment in Canadian airports. <\/p>\n

But IFM will remain interested so long as the federal government is clear about its intention. <\/p>\n

Story Continues <\/p>\n

“Could it take a year? It could,” Peressutti said. “But I don’t think any investor would tell you that’s an unreasonable amount of time to wait if the prime minister and his team makes it explicit.” <\/p>\n

Carney’s first budget last fall said his government would consider options to privatize Canada’s airports, and he followed up with a spring pledge to assess opportunities “to unlock the full value of airports in support of investments in Canada’s long-term growth, including through alternative models of ownership.” <\/p>\n

Ottawa already announced new legislation in the spring that would speed up the process by compelling “entities that own or operate an airport” and individuals whose activities may affect the value of an airport to hand over information at the government’s requests on the transportation minister’s timetable. The same spring economic update included the announcement of a $25-billion sovereign wealth fund to be seeded, in part, with proceeds from asset recycling \u2014 selling public assets to private institutional investors in order to fund new government priority projects that would not meet the risk and return criteria set by private investors. <\/p>\n

Peressutti said IFM, one of the large Australian institutional investors Carney met with during a swing through the country to promote trade and investment in March, is hoping to brief Canadian officials on Australia’s success with asset recycling, a program in the mid to late 2010s that drew investment from some of Canada’s largest pension funds. <\/p>\n

“Most failures in the public-private partnership and asset recycling space have come when one side wasn’t exactly sure of the deal they were getting themselves into,” he said, adding that IFM’s toll road ownership agreements stipulate minute details down to how long the grass is allowed to grow. <\/p>\n

“I always use that as an example of detail that we oftentimes will readily agree to operate under\u2026. Those are the negotiations that we have to make sure that both sides are crystal clear.” <\/p>\n

If Australian pension funds were to buy a Canadian airport, Peressutti said it would likely be done in partnership with at least one of Canada’s Maple 8, an informal term used to describe the country’s largest pension funds including the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board<\/a> and the Caisse de d\u00e9p\u00f4t et placement du Qu\u00e9bec<\/a>. <\/p>\n

“I would imagine that at the end of the day \u2026 there would be a consortium of which the Maple 8 would be a major part,” he said, adding that this would make sense since it’s their home market and could help with public opinion. <\/p>\n

Moreover, the Australian and Canadian pension funds have already forged partnerships around the world. <\/p>\n

Peressutti said his fund would not be averse to the government retaining a stake in airports or board representation, so long as the governance structure meets the private investors’ requirements. <\/p>\n

As for what other types of investments IFM is looking for in Canada, he said these include tolls roads, seaports, renewable energy, liquid natural gas, midstream oil pipelines and data centres. <\/p>\n

“It’s that kind of what I would call legacy infrastructure that we invest in,” he said. <\/p>\n

\u2022 Email: bshecter@nationalpost.com<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Governance changes and possibly even legislation would be required to privatize a couple of dozen large airports in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[367,17,15616,46152,46154,42649,111,4667,46153,6309,16453,2140],"class_list":["post-139468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-australia","tag-canada","tag-canadian-airports","tag-gian-carlo-peressutti","tag-governance-changes","tag-ifm","tag-mark-carney","tag-pension-funds","tag-peressutti","tag-private-investors","tag-public-opinion","tag-the-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}