Pension Pulse

Alan Livsey of the Financial Times reports  Canada’s Maple revolutionaries in pensions feel the strain: Shortly after she took over as UK Chancellor, Rachel Reeves offered some advice to the UK pension industry — “learn lessons from the Canadian model and fire up the UK economy”. She was on her way to Toronto to meet the bosses of the country’s top pension plans, so perhaps a little flattery ahead of time made sense. Reeves went to visit them for good reason. For more than 30 years, Canada has been a model for pension funds around the world. Now it is more common for pensions to invest in alternative assets such as private assets and hedge funds. But Canada led the way, with its pension funds often taking direct stakes in companies or assets and managing more of them internally rather than just relying on external managers. As a 2012 Economist article on the “Maple revolutionaries” reported, “they own assets all over the world, including property in Manhattan, utilities ...

Freschia Gonzales of Pensions and Benefits Monitor reports  Ontario's university pension fund stays fully funded through a turbulent year Ontario's university sector pension plan closed 2025 fully funded with a surplus and $13.5bn in net assets, despite a year shaped by geopolitical tension, trade uncertainty, and elevated long-term interest rates.  University Pension Plan Ontario (UPP) posted a 5.2 percent total fund net return and a three-year annualized return of 8.5 percent, ending the year 103 percent funded on a smoothed basis with a $0.3bn surplus, according to its 2025 annual report.   Net assets grew from $12....

Sean Conlon and Lisa Kailai Han of CNBC report stocks close at record highs with tech leading the way again. Nasdaq gains 8% in May: U.S. equities closed at record highs on Friday, while crude prices slipped, helping the major averages score a winning month, boosted by technology. The Nasdaq Composite settled up 0.2% at 26,972.62, while the S&P 500 climbed 0.22% to 7,580.06. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 363.49 points, or 0.72%, at 51,032.46. All three indexes hit fresh all-time intraday highs earlier as well. Dell Technologies was a winner. Shares surged nearly 33%, seeing its best day on record, after the laptop maker reported a first-quarter beat on both the top and bottom lines and raised its full-year guidance. Shares of Micron Technology and Qualcomm rose 5% and 3%, respectively, adding to their recent gains. While the two have suffered notable drops this month, they both posted sizable gains in the period. Micron jumped almost 88% in May, while Qua...

Layan Odeh of Bloomberg reports  BCI expands into financing private equity funds amid deal slump: British Columbia Investment Management Corp. created a team within its private equity unit to provide financing to buyout firms that are increasingly looking for new ways to drum up cash amid a prolonged dealmaking drought. The new Capital Solutions Group will focus on preferred equity, recapitalizations and funding continuation vehicles, according to Jon Salon, the pension fund’s head of private equity. “We can be a capital solutions provider to our general partners in the market at a time where liquidity is scarce,” he said in an interview. Deal activity across the buyout industry has remained subdued for years, limiting firms’ ability to return capital to investors. In response, fund managers have increasingly turned to alternative liquidity tactics, including so-called continuation vehicles that allow them to hold investments for longer while generating distributi...