May 8 (Reuters) - Australian pension fund UniSuper said
it paid A$1 billion ($677 million) for an indirect 5% stake in
newly privatised European telecom masts business Vantage Towers , as it looks to expand infrastructure and private
investments globally.
Top shareholder Vodafone agreed to sell a chunk of
Vantage to a consortium including U.S. private equity giants KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners in November. UniSuper
said on Monday it was buying into the consortium through KKR.
"We are always looking to doing meaningful-sized stakes, as
we're getting to being quite a big fund nowadays," said Sandra
Lee, head of private markets at UniSuper, which manages about
A$115 billion in assets.
"It wasn't an auction process, and they were looking for
larger-scale investors - we were buying into it in an
opportunistic style deal."
KKR and GIP had no immediate comment. UniSuper did not
disclose any further deal terms. Vantage Towers is due to be
de-listed on May 9.
($1 = 1.4765 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Tom Westbrook and Rae Wee in Singapore; Editing
by Jamie Freed)
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