Pension Pulse

Hugo Joncas and Julien Arsenault of La Presse report the Caisse's trusted man at the heart of the corruption plot (translated from French): In September 2021, Azure Power  – which received more than $600 million from Quebecers – announced the arrival of Alan Rosling as chairman of its board of directors. The Indian company emphasized that he was appointed by the Caisse, its controlling shareholder. Considered an accomplished businessman and pioneer of climate finance in India, he was in principle responsible for ensuring the good governance of the organization. According to the American stock market watchdog, Rosling instead participated in the plot to pay some US $250 million in bribes to representatives of Indian states. He would have acted in concert with Azure's main rival, the Adani group, whose founder, Gautam Adani, 27th richest person in the world according to Forbes, is close to Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. For the nest egg of Quebecers, this story of...

John Graham, President and CEO of CPP Investments, recently penned an article for the National Post on what gen Z needs to know about the Canada Pension Plan: This message is for gen Z . If you’re not gen Z, I hope you’ll keep reading anyway. As we mark Financial Literacy Month, I know many of you are feeling anxious about money. In fact, we’ve heard that over two-thirds of gen Z worry about making the wrong financial decisions and about the same number are concerned they will run out of money in retirement. It’s understandable — student loans, rent, house prices and the rising cost of living are a lot to manage at any age. At this point in your life, investing money systematically for retirement probably seems out of reach. Fortunately, if you’re part of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), you’re already doing just that. Here’s how the Canadian pension promise works: Every month, a small part of your pay goes into the CPP, matched by your employer. The amount not needed to pay...

Charles Mathieu of Le Journal de Montréal reports that nothing is going well in Ottawa: 10 federal civil servants make more than $2 million (translated from French): Even though he is the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau is far from being the highest paid in the federal apparatus. The prize goes to a civil servant who earns 17 times her salary, reveals a compilation from our Bureau of Investigation. It is Deborah K. Orida, CEO of PSP Investments, the manager of Canadian government employee pension fund who pockets the biggest income, she earned $7.1 million in 2023-2024 after taking into account a hiring bonus of $2 million. Ms. Orida earns nearly $2.5 million more than the CEO of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), Charles Emond, who was, for his part, the highest paid executive in the Quebec state. Senior executives at PSP and executives at CPP Investment, which manages the Canada pension plan, are by far the highest paid employees of federal Crown corporati...

Charles Daly, Eyk Henning, Chunying Zhang and Wilfried Eckl-Dorna of Bloomberg report Northvolt collapse countdown started with BMW order cancellation: For Northvolt AB, the Swedish startup that became a poster child for Europe’s electric-driving future, the route to collapse started in June when BMW AG cancelled a multi-billion-dollar order: Back then, few saw the significance of the move, which effectively started a countdown that would culminate in a Chapter 11 filing less than six months later. Northvolt scrambled to keep the financing flowing, but as Germany’s car industry fell deeper into its own crisis, it became clear orders would dry up. The company responded to the lost revenue by retrenching expansion plans and slashing jobs. By the time the last attempt at an emergency plan failed, investors who had poured in US$10 billion discovered only US$30 million cash was left. Northvolt’s filing for bankruptcy protection in the United States, announced Thursday, marks one...