Pension Pulse

Infrastructure expert Aaron Vale attended the Berlin infrastructure conference recently and was kind enough to share his thoughts and insights in this guest post: Berlin Summit: Caffeine Buzz and Sugar High The annual Berlin infrastructure conference is a spectacle like no other - a global gathering where investors, fund managers, lawyers, bankers, and industry pros converge to take the pulse of the infrastructure investment world. Picture the Berlin Hilton bursting at the seams, with conversations spilling into nearby coffee shops and bars, generating countless millions in economic activity for the city. It’s an event that leaves attendees running on empty, but also brimming with insights. As winter reluctantly gives way to spring, this year's edition proved particularly illuminating against today's complex macroeconomic backdrop.  I am grateful for the chance to participate in the dynamic private infrastructure investment industry. The Berlin conference provides a valuable...

James Bradshaw of the Globe and Mail reports Ontario Teachers looks to rebalance U.S., overseas investments as trade tensions rise: Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan is reassessing its appetite for U.S. investments in the face of tariffs and trade tensions, looking for ways to boost the share of its overseas assets as economic risks rise. Teachers has more than two-thirds of its $266-billion of assets invested in Canada and the United States - 36 per cent at home and 33 per cent south of the border. With U.S. president Donald Trump promising to press ahead with punishing tariffs on Canada, Mexico and other trading partners, “one of the questions inevitably will be, well, what do we want to do next vis-a-vis our U.S. activity?” chief executive officer Jo Taylor said in an interview on Thursday. Teachers is in “a live process” to determine whether to change the geographic mix of its investments, he said, in the same way that individual companies are looking to diversify t...

James Bradshaw of the Globe and Mail reports Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan closes Hong Kong office: Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is closing its Hong Kong office and shifting some staff to Singapore, as the $256-billion pension fund looks to streamline its operations in Asia. The office, first opened in 2013, had already been pared back, as Teachers shifted its focus abroad and pulled back in China. The Hong Kong outpost currently houses about 20 staff who are mostly focused on private equity and venture capital investments. Spokesperson Dan Madge said Teachers “made the difficult decision to close our Hong Kong office and plan to wind down on-the-ground operations” over the next 18 months or more. The pension fund, which manages retirement savings for about 340,000 members who are mostly working and retired teachers in Ontario, opened offices in Singapore in 2020 and Mumbai in 2022. “We will be optimizing our footprint in the Asia-Pacific region through our offices...