Pension Pulse

James Bradshaw of the Globe and Mail reports  CPPIB to lay off dozens of employees at struggling active equities division: Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is laying off dozens of employees from its active equities division and will merge the department with another unit after several years of underperformance, two sources with knowledge of the decision said. The cuts affect a large part of the department’s employees, though a majority of staff will stay on and some of the affected employees may find roles in other departments, the sources said. Frank Ieraci, a senior managing director who led the active equities division since 2020, and joined CPPIB in 2007, is among the employees who are departing, the sources said. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to discuss internal CPPIB decisions. The active equities strategy will be merged with CPPIB’s capital markets and factor investing division, which is led by senior managing director...

James Bradshaw of The Globe and Mail reports  PSP Investments to pay $1.6-billion for 50% stake in Brookfield’s Enercare: Public Sector Pension Investment Board is paying $1.6-billion to acquire a 50-per-cent stake in Ontario-based home services company Enercare Inc. from Brookfield Asset Management Ltd., betting on essential services as a hedge against a potential rise in inflation. Brookfield took Enercare private in 2018 in a deal worth $4.3-billion including debt. Since then, PSP Investments has had a small, passive stake in the company as a co-investor with Brookfield, and is now taking over joint ownership with Brookfield. Markham, Ont.-based Enercare rents and sells equipment such as water heaters, furnaces, air conditioners and water purifiers, as well as protection plans to cover them, to more than 1.4 million homes and businesses in Canada. The company has a leading market share in Ontario. Since Brookfield took the company private, it has expanded its services into Queb...

Sean Conlon, Jenni Reid, Lee Ying Shan and Paulina Likos of CNBC report the Nasdaq rebounds 1% following worst session in 18 months as traders snap up tech shares: The Nasdaq Composite  rebounded on Friday as some investors bought the dip in chip stocks following a punishing sell-off that sent the index into correction territory. The tech-heavy Nasdaq bounced 1.09% to close at 24,579.42. The S&P 500  rose 0.31% to end at 7,376.86, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average  lost 237.33 points, or 0.46%, and settled at 51,285.73. Worries of a potential slowdown in data center construction following big Democratic wins in the House and Senate and key state governorships hit U.S. markets hard on Thursday. The heavy selling on Thursday sent the three major stock averages to their worst one-day losses since April 2025. The Nasdaq Composite tumbled 5.5%, closing more than 10% below its most recent high and putting it in what Wall Street regards as a correction. The broad-mar...

Steve Randall of Wealth Professional reports  Canadian retirement system scores B as aging crisis reshapes global pension outlook:  Canada maintained a B grade in the newly released 2026 Marsh CFA Institute Global Pension Index, but the annual benchmark sounded an increasingly urgent warning about the long-term pressures aging populations are placing on retirement income systems. The 18th annual index, produced by Marsh (NYSE: MRSH) and CFA Institute in collaboration with the Monash Centre for Financial Studies in Melbourne, Australia, benchmarks 55 retirement income systems across the globe - covering approximately 66% of the world's population - on three sub-indices: adequacy, sustainability, and integrity. Canada scored 70.6 overall in 2026, up marginally from 70.4 in 2025, with sub-index scores of 67.1 for adequacy, 66.6 for sustainability, and 81.7 for integrity. Canada's integrity score - among the strong...

Today, BCI's real estate subsidiary issued a press release stating, "Rooted in Canada, Built for the World: A decade of global expansion at QuadReal": From a predominantly Canadian portfolio to a global business in just 10 years, QuadReal has combined local expertise with a vertically integrated operating model to diversify its investments and build for the long-term. From its inception, QuadReal’s ambition was to build on its Canadian foundation to create a globally balanced portfolio. Remco Daal, Chief Operating Officer, says “it was always the vision to get us closer to 50-50” when asked about the mix of international and domestic investments.  The opportunity was to take what QuadReal knew from the Canadian landscape and build on it. Ten years into QuadReal’s history, that ambition has shaped both where the company invests and how it operates.   What began with a predominantly Canadian portfolio has grown into one of the world’s top 15 real estate investors, ...