Canadians to bid for UK railway

[John Ashworth]

Why Canadian teachers want to buy our railway

The retired teachers from Ontario have invested their pension fund in several UK ventures - now they have bid for the high-speed railway

* Homa Khaleeli
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 June 2010 20.00 BST

A retirement fund set up for state-school teachers in Canada sounds like a sensible, provincial operation – not the obvious choice to own a railway. But this week, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan was touted as a likely bidder for Britain's first high-speed railway, which the government put up for auction on Monday.

Tasked with looking after the retirement cash of 289,000 teachers, the fund is no stranger to snapping up British assets – it already owns almost half of Bristol airport, is buying Camelot (which runs the National Lottery), owns a chunk of Northumbrian Water and recently bought special-needs education and fostering provider Acorn. Closer to home, it part-owns an ice hockey team – the Toronto Maple Leafs.

It wasn't always so impressive – in 1989 Teachers (as it is more jauntily known) was run by the state and all its investments were government bonds. Now the plan invests in companies directly – cutting out the money managers who usually pick out private equity for pension plans – and has a staggering $96.4bn in assets. But sadly, unless you are willing to emigrate and discover a vocation for teaching, there's no hope of joining this golden pension scheme.