Pension Pulse

Paul Sambo of Bloomberg News reports that CPPIB's Mark Machin warns on global rush into illiquid assets:
The biggest global funds should all be monitoring their investments in illiquid assets, according to the head of Canada’s largest pension fund.

“I do ring the alarm bell on not to be too invested in illiquid assets,” Mark Machin, chief executive officer of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, said in a Bloomberg Television interview Monday at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “We are very comfortable with our risk models and what we would do in various lurches down markets, but I do worry about the expansion of a lot of funds like us around the world into private illiquid assets.”

Lower-for-longer interest rates have pushed pension funds and asset managers to cast their nets far and wide in search for returns amid a slew of geopolitical risks and trade tensions. Investors looking to diversify their portfolios are seeking shelter in low volatility assets that tend to be i…

Last Thursday, Denis Lessard and André Dubuc of La Presse reported that CDPQ's Board of Directors is recommending Macky Tall to take over the helm of that organization as Michael Sabia sets to depart. The article is in French so I took the liberty to translate it using Google and edited some passages:
White smoke marking the choice of the new president of the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) is about to appear. The committee of the board of directors of the organization responsible for finding the rare pearl recommends the choice of Macky Tall, president of CDPQ Infra and senior manager of the Metropolitan Express Network (REM) project in Montreal, several sources told La Presse.

But Mr. Tall’s candidacy faces obstacles within government. Pierre Fitzgibbon, Minister of the Economy and former member of the Board of Directors of the Caisse de depot, rather promotes André Bourbonnais, who lives in New York. At the helm for a few months of a BlackRock private equity fund…

Mark DeCambre of MarketWatch reports the man who made a killing during financial crisis says that, at some point, the stock market will slow down — but, till then, ‘I love riding a horse that’s running’:
Perhaps, cribbing from the lyrics to the viral song “Old Town Road,” David Tepper is going to take his horse and ride till he can’t no more.

That is essentially the sentiment conveyed by the founder of hedge fund Appaloosa Management to CNBC on Friday.

Tepper told the network’s anchor Joe Kernen that he “has been long and will continue that way.”

The U.S. stock market has enjoyed a nearly uninterrupted assault on records, highlighted by the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing at a milestone above 29,000 for the first time and the S&P 500 achieving its own landmark close above the psychological round-number at 3,300, while investors in the Nasdaq Composite Index may have their sights trained on 10,000.

The ascent for stocks has made investors uneasy, primarily, because markets a…