(Bloomberg) -- Australian Retirement Trust is the second of the country’s major pension funds to reveal losses on US education software firm Pluralsight Inc. as private credit lenders take ownership of the company.
The nation’s no. 2 pension fund, which manages more than A$300 billion ($204 billion) of assets, wrote off its A$75 million investment in Pluralsight earlier this year, an ART spokesperson said in an emailed response to questions.
“Pluralsight represented less than 0.5% of our private equity portfolio and less than 0.05% of fund assets,” the spokesperson said, adding it “was one of thousands of individual investments within our diversified private equity portfolio.”
ART’s loss is dwarfed by a writedown at its biggest rival, with the country’s largest pension AustralianSuper losing A$1.1 billion on its investment. The fund had invested in Vista Equity Partners, which bought Pluralsight three years ago, according to the pension’s latest disclosures.
Vista and its co-investors, which also include Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, are losing around $4 billion on their original equity investment following the debt restructuring that wrapped up last week.
Australia’s pension industry is nearing A$4 trillion in assets. As the industry has rapidly grown, it has shown an increasing appetite for private assets, which now make up around one fifth of investments. That’s brought increased scrutiny from regulators, who this month flagged such investments as a priority.
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