UK fund manager Hermes has teamed up with Canada's biggest pension plan to acquire a 30% stake in the UK's biggest ports operator – the second major deal in a month that sees British pension investors buy British infrastructure assets.

A sale of the Associated British Ports stake has been mooted for several months, with reports that Goldman Sachs's flagship infrastructure investment vehicle, GS Infrastructure Partners, which owns 23.33% of ABP, and M&G's Infracapital arm, 10% shareholders, were interested in selling.