MELBOURNE, Jan 5 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Get ready for the Australian invasion. Rapid consolidation among the country’s bulging retirement funds is changing their approach to investing. They’re increasingly making decisions in-house and seeking control of companies. With these big stockpiles of pension money outgrowing their home market, more takeover targets are destined to be overseas. So-called superannuation funds Down Under amassed more than A$3.4 trillion ($2.4 trillion) by the end of September, an 18% increase from a year earlier. The figure equates to 136% of the combined market value of every listed company on the domestic stock exchange and 70% more than Australia’s annual GDP – and the industry is growing faster than the economy. Collectively, it’s the fifth-largest pool of such capital in the world, according to OECD data. The clout is causing some concern at home. A new parliamentary inquiry is probing, among other things, the concentration of ownership in publicly traded companies and pension power over shareholder ballots. The pace of mergers is also accelerating, creating mega-funds with greater purchasing power and desires to invest more autonomously, as has occurred in Canada. By 2029, there will be just 85 Australian superannuation funds, down from nearly 220 in 2019, according to a KPMG projection. Their confidence in pursuing chunky M&A is also becoming clearer. For its first solo acquisition attempt, AustralianSuper, the country’s largest with some A$230 billion under management, tried to buy Kiwi infrastructure investor Infratil (IFT.NZ) about a year ago. Aware Super, the product of a big merger, teamed up with Macquarie’s (MQG.AX) infrastructure arm to pay A$4.6 billion for Vocus, an Australian fibre broadband network owner. A group led by IFM Investors, whose shareholders include 23 superannuation funds, and including QSuper, is taking Sydney Airport (SYD.AX) private read more for A$24 billion. In December, Sunsuper and QIC, a pension fund owned by the state of Queensland, together agreed to acquire Evolution Healthcare, one of New Zealand’s biggest hospital operators. The bigger these funds get, the more they’ll want to diversify their risk and seek returns less correlated with significant domestic holdings. The booming energy transition also will present plenty of tempting longer-term assets around the world that suit retirement portfolio investing, adding to the traditional mix of ports, toll roads and such. To thrive in 2022, foreign investment bankers should brush up on their Australian. (This is a Breakingviews prediction for 2022. To see more of our predictions, click here.) Follow @jgfarb on Twitter CONTEXT NEWS - Australian pension fund managers QIC and Sunsuper said on Dec. 9 that they had agreed to buy Evolution Healthcare, New Zealand’s second-largest hospital operator. - The purchase price was nearly A$700 million ($500 million), according to Bloomberg, which cited an unnamed source.