Pension Pulse

Michael Cole of Mingtiandi reports  La Caisse commits $693M to Australia’s NextDC in first APAC data centre deal: La Caisse has made its first direct investment in a data centre strategy in Asia Pacific, with the Canadian pension fund manager committing A$1.0 billion ($693 million) to a subordinated hybrid securities offer by NextDC. The Quebec-based organisation has made a binding commitment to take up the full size of the offer, according to an announcement filed with the Australian Securities Exchange on Tuesday, with NextDC said to be using the capital to fund construction of its contracted pipeline through to fiscal 2029. “The announcement of the hybrid securities offer and the La Caisse commitment represent another step toward NextDC delivering on a material step-change in the scale of our business as we deliver on the Company’s contracted forward order book across the period to FY29,” chief executive Craig Scroggie said. The deal lifts NextDC’s pro-forma liquidi...

Leo de Bever, former CEO of AIMCo, sent me a short comment on why he feels the Maple 8 should invest more wisely at home: The Canadian Maple 8 argues that investing more in at-home is unwarranted because it conflicts with ‘prudent’ geographic risk diversification. It implicitly assumes that all Canadian assets are highly correlated and that no domestic investments could improve on the current asset mix. The real reason is simpler. I used to invest in faraway places and rarely got a reaction. When you invest at home, everyone has an opinion, and boards and portfolio managers become worried about personal returns on risk. The economic models we used when I was at the Bank of Canada in the 1970s assumed that the bulk of domestic savings went into domestic investment, thereby building a stronger economy. Much greater capital mobility has made that less of a given. Inadvertently, the Maple 8 (with rare exceptions) exports capital and imports innovation . I have found tha...

Dale Burgess, Executive Managing Director, Equities at OTPP sat down with PEI Group's Chris Witkowsky and David Nowak, president of Brookfield for the second episode of PEI Group's new Commitment Issues podcast miniseries to discuss whether private equity's best days are behind it: Have expectations for private equity changed? What’s the role of the asset class in the portfolio these days? These are the questions that Dale Burgess, executive managing director for equities at Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, and David Nowak, president of private equity firm Brookfield, tackle in the second episode of PEI Group's new Commitment Issues podcast miniseries. As the industry works through a backlog of unrealised assets, questions have arisen about performance, asset valuations and firms’ ability to acquire and sell companies in the time frame LPs have come to expect. For instance, average investment hold periods in private equity have now risen to around seven ye...

James Bradshaw of the Globe and Mail reports  AIMCo earned 7.5 per cent return last year as stocks propped up private assets: Alberta Investment Management Corp. aims to take advantage of pressure in private credit and infrastructure, positioning itself as a buyer when some fund managers sell off assets to raise cash. The Alberta-based pension fund manager made a 7.5-per-cent return last year as stocks did well and private assets struggled, according to a news release. The diverging performance of public and private markets was a key reason why AIMCo fell short of its internal benchmark by 2.7 percentage points. More than a third of its assets are private, but those portfolios are generally measured against stock indexes that surged in value last year. AIMCo’s balanced fund – which reflects a typical mix of assets held by its 17 core clients – earned 7.6 per cent in the year that ended Dec. 31, and missed its benchmark by the same margin. The balanced fund has an avera...