The China Investment Corporation (CIC) has created a direct investment arm to support domestic companies growing internationally.
“We’re exploring a lot of projects, and talking to many companies.” —Zhao Haiying, CICCIC Capital will operate on a commercial basis, according to Bloomberg, and focus on companies operating across a wide spectrum of industries. It will subsume the direct investments the fund already makes and target new companies that have a desire to grow outside national borders.
“We’re exploring a lot of projects, and talking to many companies,” Zhao Haiying, a member of executive committee of the Beijing-based fund, told Bloomberg. Zhao mentioned agriculture and infrastructure as areas of potential development.
By creating the separate entity, the fund intends to increase the efficiency of these direct investments, Zhao said. CIC Capital will consider co-investment opportunities and offer other non-financial help to ambitious companies too.
Last year, the fund announced a joint private equity deal with the Irish National Pensions Reserve Fund to invest $100 million in fast-moving Irish and Chinese technology companies.
As more large institutional investors are opting to investing in companies directly, last week, UK public pension funds were urged to put more of their capital to work and compete for infrastructure assets.
According to its 2013 annual report, the CIC bucked a global trend of insourcing investment capabilities by upping the level of its assets being managed by external managers by almost 20%.
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