Pension Pulse

Layan Odeh of Bloomberg reports BCI shuts two stock funds, cites shrinking public pool: British Columbia Investment Management Corp. is closing two global stock-picking strategies that oversee about C$4.3 billion ($3.1 billion), as it contends with a contracting pool of publicly listed firms. The pension fund manager is retiring two internally managed global strategies focused on thematic and fundamental equities, BCI said an emailed statement to Bloomberg. The strategies, Global Active Thematic Equities and Global Active Fundamental Equities, make up about 7.2% of its public equities portfolio. “The opportunity set for active fundamental stock selection in global developed equities has reduced materially — fewer listed companies, growth companies staying private for much longer, higher index concentration and a narrower path to alpha,” BCI’s global head of capital markets and credit investments, Daniel Garant, said in the statement. The rise of passive investing has fur...

Mathew Kaminski, a former employee of CPP Investments, wrote a lengthy blog comment on how CPP executives are manipulating their benchmarks to pay themselves before your retirement. He calls it an insider's perspective on the illegitimate $100 million dollar wealth transfer from Canadian taxpayers to CPP execs and employees, and exactly how they covered it up: As you may have seen, CPP Investments published its Annual Report for the Year Ending March 2026 yesterday. It would be one thing if CPP was underperforming their benchmark. It would be another if they were manipulating their benchmark to pay themselves unduly. It would be another if they were depressing growth in the Canadian economy writ-large to cover it all up. I’ll prove they are doing all three. In short, CPP Investments leadership manipulated their benchmarks over 2025 and 2026 to pay themselves and their teams at least an extra $100 million while they missed the baseline target of 4% real return needed to s...

OMERS CEO Blake Hutcheson joined Drumbeats to discuss Indigenous equity and the Canadian capital case: Today's Spotlight     OMERS to deploy £5.5bn more in Canada, lifting allocation above 20%.     Carney-Smith pact opens 1mbpd oil pipeline to Asian buyers.     Atlantic First Nations stake claim in £33bn Wind West build.     Selkirk First Nation lines up Alaska port as global mineral export route. "A quarter isn't three months. A quarter is 25 years." What does it mean when one of Canada's Maple 8 thinks in generational time? In a Drumbeats first, Blake Hutcheson, President and Chief Executive Officer of OMERS, joined co-hosts Mark Magnacca and Rob Brant in front of a live audience at the First Nations Major Projects Coalition annual conference in Toronto. Over the next five years, OMERS will deploy at least £5.5bn (CA$10bn) of additional ca...

Fiona Craig of Investor Hub reports hedge funds scale back chip holdings after massive AI-driven surge:  Hedge funds have been trimming positions in U.S. semiconductor companies following the sector’s outsized gains, choosing to secure profits while still maintaining strong exposure to artificial intelligence investments, according to Goldman Sachs data referenced by Bloomberg on Thursday. Information from Goldman’s prime brokerage unit reportedly indicated that semiconductor and semiconductor equipment stocks were the most heavily net-sold U.S. subsector over the past month. The activity was driven primarily by investors reducing long exposure rather than building significant short positions against chipmakers . That shift has pushed the sector into a net-selling position for the year to date. The profit-taking follows a steep rally across AI-linked chip stocks. Goldman Sachs’ AI semiconductor basket has outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 50% in 2026...