GLIL, the joint venture founded by the Greater Manchester Pension Fund and the London Pensions Fund Authority, has announced its investment in the Abellio East Anglia rail service.

GLIL will provide an estimated £45m of equity to a consortium alongside SL Capital and RockRail. The group will fund 58 trains with 387 carriages for the line and will extend rail capacity by up to 78 per cent for Norfolk and Suffolk.

In addition, the rail's debt was arranged by DC Advisory from Aviva, Sun Life, Barings Asset Management, Legal & General, Standard Life Investments and the European Investment Bank, which is providing a 28-year £60m loan using its European Fund for Strategic Investments guarantee.

Greater Manchester Pension Fund chair Kieran Quinn, said: “This investment continues GLIL’s progress and success in acquiring highly prized assets at attractive rates of return whilst also supporting major UK infrastructure projects. Through GLIL we are able to tailor our investments to better control risks and provide a return stream well suited to meeting our pension liabilities. We’re excited by the pipeline of potential investments as we look forward to working on more opportunities and deploying our remaining capital.

“Going forward we anticipate growing GLIL, and in turn our investment capacity, as other LGPS Funds join.”

LPFA chairman, Sir Merrick Cockell, added: “We’re delighted that our infrastructure partnership with Greater Manchester has once again delivered on our stated goal of hands-on direct investment and successful collaboration. This investment will give us the strong levels of return we seek as well as provide badly needed and upgraded trains for the region.

“Many pension funds may struggle to invest in infrastructure. Our collaborative initiative has enabled us to share resources and expertise in order to provide access to opportunities harder to reach were we to go it alone. We look forward to building upon this success and growing the venture.”

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