Pension Pulse

Sam Fenwick of Telco Magazine reports  BCE sells a 49.9% stake in Bell’s tower assets to La Caisse: Mirko Bibic, President and CEO of BCE and Bell Canada, will use the US$1.74bn from La Caisse to fund AI growth and reduce debt Bell Canada is selling a 49.9% stake in a newly formed wireless tower infrastructure company to global investment group La Caisse for CAD2.45bn (US$1.74bn). The new entity, dubbed TowerCo (its final name will be announced at transaction close), is valued at around CAD4.91bn (US$3.49bn) and, according to BCE, will become Canada's largest dedicated tower company with more than 5,000 sites. BCE, Bell Canada's parent company, expects the deal to close in Q1 2027, provided it receives the necessary regulatory approvals and satisfies other customary closing conditions. TowerCo will lease capacity on the transferred towers back to Bell and will focus on growth through new site builds, site densification and third-party colocation. Bell will retain a 50.1% cont...

Jonalyn Cueto of Benefits and Pensions Monitor reports  OMERS expands in Australian private credit and Dutch energy infrastructure: OMERS has agreed to buy an indirect minority stake in Australian lender La Trobe Financial and helped complete a €662 million Dutch refinancing. The Ontario pension plan announced the two deals this week. It held C$151.6 billion in net assets as of June 30. A stake in Australian private credit Brookfield said OMERS will acquire an indirect minority interest in La Trobe through a Brookfield private equity vehicle. Neither the size nor the price of the stake was disclosed. Brookfield keeps majority ownership. ...

James Bradshaw of The Globe and Mail reports  CAAT Pension Plan names OPTrust’s Peter Lindley as CEO: CAAT Pension Plan has appointed Peter Lindley as chief executive officer and plan manager, installing a new leader after a year of turmoil that led to the departure of most of the plan’s executive team. Mr. Lindley is stepping down from another pension plan, OPTrust, where he has been CEO since 2019 . He starts at CAAT on Jan. 6. CAAT’s leadership ranks have been in a state of flux for most of the year after failures in the plan’s oversight spurred an abrupt overhaul . Those issues included a $1.6-million vacation payout to previous CEO Derek Dobson, as well as a relationship he was having with a CAAT employee. CAAT is a multiemployer pension plan with $25.4-billion in assets that serves Ontario’s colleges and about 850 public- and private-sector employers with more than 130,000 members. The Globe and Mail has been a participating employer since 2022. In July, after a third-party r...

Today, PSP Investments posted this on LinkedIn on a recent discussion between CEO Deborah Orida and Goldy Hyder at the Canadian Club Toronto: The inaugural Canada Investment Summit focused the attention of global capital and gave Canada a podium to make its case to the world. What comes next? This question was at the heart of a fireside conversation between our President and CEO Deborah K. Orida and Goldy Hyder, President and CEO of the Business Council of Canada, at Canadian Club Toronto on Thursday. From infrastructure and airports to structured financing and infrastructure credit, Deb shared PSP Investments’ perspective on the opportunities we see in Canada, drawing on examples of how we are putting capital and expertise to work and leveraging our global experience locally. I am not going to go over the entire discussion but jump right into minute 21 after Deb said "the opportunity is not Canada instead of the US" but to think about Canada "as a seperate desti...

Hugh Leask, Lee Ying Shan and Tobias Burns of CNBC report the Dow tumbles more than 600 points as oil prices rise and market sell-off hits most sectors:  The Dow slid on Friday as a sell-off in tech in the prior session shifted to other areas of the market and U.S. oil prices topped $100 a barrel amid rising fears that the U.S.-Iran conflict would flare up again. The Dow Jones Industrial Average  dropped 652.82 points, or 1.23%, to settle at 52,215.16, while the S&P 500  slipped 0.52% to 7,623.68. The Nasdaq Composite  lost 0.21% to close at 25,955.34. More defensive stocks came under pressure on Friday, with the consumer staples, utilities and healthcare sectors all lower. Dow component American Express  fell more than 3% after announcing it was cutting about 5% of its global workforce , citing the need to “prepare for AI.” Caterpillar  also edged down about 2%, while Goldman Sachs  lost more than 1%, adding pressure to the 30-stock...