The $269.6B Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has appointed Jenny Hammarlund as executive managing director for real estate, effective January 5th.
She succeeds Pierre Cherki, who joined the plan in 2024 to take on the newly created role. With her appointment, Hammarlund will be responsible for “guiding the real estate team’s strategy, portfolio, and asset management activities globally,” according to a news release.
Hammarlund brings more than two decades of experience in private equity, with a focus on real estate acquisitions. She joined Cadillac Fairview (CF), Ontario Teachers’ direct real estate investment arm, in 2021 to head up its investment group in the U.K. and Europe, before moving to Ontario Teachers’ in 2024 as part of an internal integration of CF’s international real estate team. Earlier in her career, she served as a managing director at H.I.G. Capital in London and held director roles at KKR & Co and Värde Partners, also in the U.K. Prior to that she was vice-president of real estate private equity at Lehman Brothers in New York for four years.
Hammarlund will remain based in London, reporting to Gillian Brown, the pension fund’s chief investment officer of public and private investments. She will also become a member of the investment division’s senior leadership team.
“Real estate is an important asset class for Ontario Teachers’ as it helps provide stable and predictable income to match our long-term liabilities, and its returns are typically uncorrelated to those of equities or bonds,” said Brown, in the news release. “[Hammarlund’s] leadership skills and experience investing globally make her the ideal person to drive our performance-focused diversification strategy in real estate over the coming years.”
Recently, the pension plan also disclosed the appointment of Salman Bashir as managing director of strategic asset allocation — total fund management.
