Pension Pulse

Sarah Rundell of Top1000funds reports AIMCo talks total portfolio approach, private credit, and risk: Alberta Investment Management Corporation, AIMCo, the $160 billion asset manager for pensions, endowments and insurance groups in Canada’s western province, is developing a total portfolio approach in private assets. Unlike other Maple Eight investors, AIMCo’s client funds decide their own asset allocation and most of them have reached their target in private markets. Rather than continuing to plough in capital, the investment team are now thinking more about comparing opportunities across assets and anticipating future trends. “The investment horizon for these assets is long and the ability to rebalance in the future is hampered,” warns Marlene Puffer, who joined AIMCo as CIO in 2023 from Canada’s railway pension fund CN Investment Division. This approach ensures AIMCo taps sufficient risk but also protects against embedding too much connected risk. Puffer says cross-fu

Hannah Zhang of Private Equity International reports on why CDPQ's head of Private Equity thinks the worst thing for a pension is to miss vintage: When Martin Longchamps took over as head of private equity at Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec in late 2022, he faced an unprecedented challenge: the institution’s allocation to private equity had reached 20 percent for the first time in its investment history, raising concerns over potential overallocation issues. The country’s second-largest pension has been a seasoned private equity investor for almost half a century. However, it wasn’t until the last decade that the asset class began to account for a significant part of its investment portfolio: CDPQ’s private equity assets nearly doubled from 10.1 percent of its portfolio in 2013 to 20.1 percent in 2022 . The upper limit for CDPQ’s allocation to PE was raised from 14.1 percent to 21.4 percent over the same period. From the start of his tenur