Pension Pulse

CDPQ put out a statement on how women and immigrants are twice as present as other groups among new entrepreneurs (translated from French): After two years of the pandemic, the overall rates of entrepreneurial intentions and steps are visibly down. Réseau Mentorat unveils today the 2021 Quebec Entrepreneurial Index presented by the Quebec Ministry of Economy and Innovation, an essential reference since 2009 in terms of measuring entrepreneurship in Quebec. Women and people of immigrant origin have rates nearly twice as high compared to men and native people among new entrepreneurs. These are results that consolidate the increasingly important place of these groups in Quebec entrepreneurship, as observed in the 2020 Index. Decline in overall rates of intentions and procedures, stability in the rate of owners In 2021, the overall rate of entrepreneurial intentions stands at 15.1%, down by more than 5 percentage points since 2019. The overall rate of initiatives stands at 7.2% (...

Sabrina Willmer of Bloomberg reports on private equity’s opaque costs and how they mystify the pensions that pay them: The stewards of billions of dollars in retiree savings are struggling to account for fees charged by one of the wealthiest industries on Wall Street. Investors who put money into a private equity fund expect to pay a management fee as well as a share of their profits to the firm running the fund. But on top of those costs are agreements to cover expenses ranging from dealmaker travel to dinners to news subscriptions. And it’s proving difficult to determine how those dollars are spent. A Bloomberg analysis of data collected from more than two dozen U.S. public pension plans shows that most of those investors aren’t tracking details of so-called partnership expenses across their private equity portfolios. Some say the task is too difficult because fund managers are reporting the costs in vastly different ways or fail to break out expenditures at all.  ...

Jahnavi Nidumolu of Reuters reports UK's National Grid to sell 60% stake in gas unit to Macquarie, BCI: Britain’s National Grid said on Sunday it would sell a 60% stake in its British gas transmission and metering business to Australia’s Macquarie Asset Management and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation as it shifts towards electricity. The deal implies an enterprise value for the unit of about 9.6 billion pounds ($12.7 billion), the company said in a statement. Macquarie said its investment will ensure the transmission system will play a leading role in delivering the UK’s net-zero by 2050 target, by supporting hydrogen’s role in the energy mix. National Grid will receive about 2.2 billion pounds in cash and about 2 billion pounds from additional debt financing following completion of the deal. National Grid’s gas transmission business includes a 7,000-kilometer pipe network across the UK, among the largest gas transmission businesses in the countr...

Inti Landauro of Reuters reports Spain's Enagas sells stake in Chile's Quintero to Fluxys for $661 million: Spain's Enagas and Canadian pension fund Omers agreed to sell their holdings in Chile's GNL Quintero, which represent an 80% stake, to Belgian gas utility Fluxys and investment fund EIG, Enagas said on Monday. The Spanish gas pipeline operator which owns 45.4% in GNL Quintero, said it sold its stake for $661 million and said the sale was part of a wider strategic plan to "rotate" assets. GNL Quintero operates a gas port terminal and a regasification plant in Valparaiso in Chile. Enagas did not give a sale price that Omers secured for its stake in GNL Quintero. Gas shipping infrastructure assets have attracted investors after several European countries said they intended to diversify from gas pumped out of Russia through pipelines in reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine last month. OMERS Infrastructure put out a statement on this deal: O...