Pension Pulse

James Bradshaw of the Globe and Mail reports HOOPP plans to allow self-employed Ontario doctors to join pension plan for the first time The Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan will allow self-employed doctors to join starting in January, giving incorporated physicians and their staff a new option to earn defined-benefit retirement income from one of the province’s largest pension funds. HOOPP’s new eligibility rules will give tens of thousands of physicians a choice to join the plan, after years of advocacy from groups that represent doctors. Until now, individual doctors who incorporated their own practices weren’t able to join HOOPP because they are effectively the employer as well as an employee of the practice, which blurred a key distinction in the way contributions are made. Many of Ontario’s doctors have no formal pension plan and are saving and planning for retirement on their own, even though some financial-services companies offer suites of products tailored to ...

BCG put out a press release earlier today stating sovereign wealth and public pension funds set to reshape private markets: BOSTON— Principal investors—including sovereign wealth funds, public pension funds, family offices, and endowments—play a critical role in the investment world. Evolving expectations, a shifting interest rate environment, and the need to manage increasingly large asset bases for performance and for national and societal impact are transforming how and where these investors allocate capital. As principal investors assume a more prominent role in the investment landscape and in society more broadly, their relationships with the general partners (GPs) that manage much of their capital are changing, too. To succeed in this new environment, principal investors and GPs must recognize the influence of current market trends and adapt to the shifting dynamics that drive investment strategies across asset classes. These are among the find...

David Rosenberg wrote a comment for the Globe and Mail on his epiphany and why this bull market may not be as irrational as he thought: It’s high time for me to stop pontificating on all the reasons why the U.S. stock market is crazily overvalued and all the reasons to be bearish based on all the variables I have relied on in the past — from valuation, to sentiment, to overcrowded positioning. So, what I am going to start doing is assessing what it is the market is saying, because the market can certainly move to excesses in both directions and make faulty assumptions, but the market is not stupid. What is the market telling us, in other words? Especially since this bull phase has now lasted long enough that those of us who have been on the wrong side of the trade need to take a different tack. This is not about throwing in the towel as much as trying to get a grip on what is going on beyond just calling this a “bubble” every single day. There must be more than that to wh...

Hugo Joncas and Julien Arseneault of La Presse report key roles for executives accused of corruption (translated from French): Three former CDPQ executives recently accused of corruption also played key roles in a subsidiary which paid 1 billion for a toll highway in India, almost twice as much as what its rivals offered, La Presse has learned. This acquisition of the Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE), announced in the fall of 2022, went unnoticed in Montreal. However, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec spoke of it as “the largest road transaction” of the year as part of the government asset privatization program in India. Acquisition price: 1.03 billion Canadian dollars. The second bidder, Cube Highways, offered only 575 million, according to two sources familiar with the situation, but who are not authorized to release this confidential information. CDPQ therefore offered 78% more, also reported the daily The Economic Times, in August 2022. The Quebec pension plan ...

James Bradshaw of the Globe and Mail reports Ontario appoints veteran director Robert Poirier to lead review of OMERS governance model: Ontario’s government has appointed businessman and corporate director Robert Poirier to lead a review of governance at Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, choosing a board member from one of the pension fund’s critics. The province has handed Mr. Poirier a 10-month mandate to examine the effectiveness of the model for governing OMERS, which is steered by two boards of directors, and whether it has engaged clearly enough with its members. Mr. Poirier is the chief executive officer of NeuState Advisory, a firm he founded, and a former executive in the pensions division of asset manager State Street Corp. He was the long-time chair of the Toronto Port Authority and, earlier in his career, advised a committee of Canada’s Senate on issues that included the creation of major public-sector pension funds such as the Public Sector Pens...