Cambridge as a whole may like to be officially helmed by a Sainsbury, but this has not stopped a certain well-funded college from implicitly placing a bet on a rival to the Chancellor’s namesake supermarket chain.

 Trinity College, with far and away the largest the endowment of the Cambridge colleges, has taken a 50 percent stake in 11 Tesco store properties.

 In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, a subsidiary spokesman would not confirm Trinity as the outside buyer into its stores. However, the spokesman cited its “JV partner” as being an “excellent, experienced property investor.”

 A source privy to the deal confirmed to Varsity that Trinity was the “JV Partner,” and noted that though different news publications have quoted the investment at different values, “The difference in land valuations are so small as to be immaterial, and the bond is worth £450 million.”

 The £450 million investment is not financed with Trinity money but actually a commercial mortgage-backed security. Trinity is thus leveraging the £720 million it has in endowment and discretionary funds- according to the most recent Report of Accounts issued in June of last year- and so is allowed to diversify its vast property holdings even further than it could with a one-off purchase of the properties.

 A subsidiary of Tesco will service the other half of the security and take on the other half of the ownership in the stores from its beleaguered parent. Tesco, while being the UK’s largest supermarket chain, is no doubt anxious to create more certain revenue streams from spin-offs like that to Trinity in the aftermath of a year of falling sales and a fall of £5 billion in market capitalization.

 Trinity’s most recent high-profile investment was a £24 million purchase of the lease for land occupied by the O2 Arena, which gave it the rights to revenue linked to ticket sales.

 Like the O2 purchase, the source said to Varsity, “This is an investment in the land, not the stores themselves. Tesco will still be the tenant.”

 According to the source, Trinity and the subsidiary will not be able to make money on the land until the bond is paid off in 30 years.

 The 11 stores are clustered in London and South Yorkshire, as well as a development site in Woolwich in South-east London.