Pension Pulse

Mary Cunningham of CBS News reports tech stocks tumble as AI debt fears rattle Wall Street: Financial markets slumped on Friday as investors bailed on technology stocks amid concerns that companies exposed to artificial intelligence are starting to wobble.  The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite tumbled 573 points, or 2.1%, to end at 26,140, closing out its worst week since June. The broader S&P 500 and blue-chip Dow Industrial Average sank 1.1% and 0.3%, respectively. Chipmakers and other tech companies have been under pressure this week as investors worry about the heavy borrowing associated with the emergence of AI and the rapid buildout of thousands of data centers required to provide computing power for AI models. So-called neocloud companies like CoreWeave, which provide the brute computing power AI models need to function, were particularly hard hit. That's because they are financing much of their capital expenditures through debt and equity issuance rather than cash flow, rai...

Lauren Bailey of Markets Group reports  Canada’s airport concessions put pension funds at a crossroads: Buy old or fund new?: Prime Minister Mark Carney’s proposed airport concessions could open some of Canada’s largest airports to pension investment, raising questions about whether acquiring established infrastructure assets is the most effective way to deploy institutional capital domestically. The proposal could give Canadian pension funds access to mature infrastructure assets with established cash flows, while allowing governments to recycle capital into new projects, said Sebastien Betermier, associate professor of finance at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management and executive director of the International Centre for Pension Management. Canadian pension funds have accumulated substantial experience investing in airports in international markets, including the U.K., Brazil and Eastern Europe. Yet Canada’s major airports, operated by nonprofit airport auth...

Season Four of the OMERS Pension Blueprint podcast recently kicked off with host Celine Chiovitti, OMERS Chief Pension Officer, interviewing Blake Hutcheson, OMERS President and CEO .   Blake is always worth listening to, he's an eternal optimist and explains why he remains positive on OMERS and Canada. He explains why everything they do centers around their liabilities and why they have a consistent, high-quality portfolio for the long term.  Instead of going through this discussion in detail, I urge you to take the time to listen to Blake. He explains it very well.   I also want to commend Celine Chiovitti for doing these podcasts. It seems easy but it's not. There’s a lot of preparation that goes into them, and she has done a great job. You can watch more interviews on The Pension Blueprint website here  (I have not seen them all but the ones that interest me are all excellent).  Below, OMERS President and CEO Blake Hutcheson returns to T...

Tom Saunders of The Telegraph reports pensions ‘superfund’ doubles in size to take on Wall Street: Britain’s only pensions “superfund” is poised to double in size after striking a string of deals to acquire underfunded retirement schemes. Clara, the first of a new type of vehicle targeting defined-benefit (DB) schemes, has agreed to take on the pensions of 3,300 members of Marelli UK, a global automotive parts supplier. The pensions are worth roughly £250m. It is Clara’s fourth deal this year, with two more to complete before the end of 2026. Together, these deals will almost double Clara’s assets under management to £2.5bn from roughly £1.3bn at the start of the year. Clara is the only British superfund currently operating and acts as a bridge to an eventual “buyout” by an insurer. The American investment firm Sixth Street backs it. Superfunds target companies often in financial trouble and want to offload their pension funds to free up cash. Marelli, for example, entered...

Joel Bowey of Connect CRE reports  PSP sells Sunrise Senior Living in a US$1 billion deal: Canada’s PSP Investments is exiting one of North America’s largest senior-housing platforms, agreeing to sell Sunrise Senior Living to BDT & MSD Partners in a transaction valued at more than US$1B, according to The Wall Street Journal. The deal shifts control of an operator with more than 230 communities and 22,000 residents across Canada and the U.S., along with a development pipeline of more than 50 communities carrying an expected development cost of about US$7.5B. Sunrise has a meaningful Canadian footprint, listing 17 communities across three provinces: nine in Ontario, five in British Columbia and three in Quebec. Its Canadian network includes properties across Greater Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, North Vancouver, Victoria and Greater Montreal. PSP first invested in Sunrise in 2014 and became its sole owner in 2023. The Canadian pension investor, which manages $320.6B in ...