Pension Pulse

Darcy Song of Top1000Funds takes a peek inside CPP Investments’ TPA engine: It has been two decades since CPP Investments, Canada’s largest pension fund, first adopted the total portfolio approach, swapping out asset class labels for underlying drivers of performance as guidelines to portfolio construction. Looking back on the revolution, the C$780 billion pension giant outlined in a recent paper the five pillars of TPA through which it achieves “disciplined flexibility”, allowing the fund to preserve “the ability to deliver exposures efficiently and adjust by choice rather than necessity”. While CPP Investments made the first foray into TPA in 2006, it wasn’t until 2016 that the fund “institutionalised” the framework and set targeted market risk and desired exposures to economic drivers at a total fund level. It then separated the investments into an active portfolio and a highly liquid, passive “balancing portfolio”. Central to CPP Investments’ TPA framewo...

John Rapley wrote a comment for the Globe and Mail stating that our pension funds must be sovereign wealth funds, too – even if pensioners take a hit: This essay is part of the Prosperity’s Path series. In a time of geopolitical instability and a shifting world order, the challenges facing Canada's economy have only gotten more visible, numerous and intense. This series brings solutions. When the 2008 financial crisis struck, the Bank of Canada followed other central banks in flooding the economy with money, by slashing interest rates and buying government debt. This juiced the economy with borrowed money. But it did nothing to boost its long-term productivity. This effectively took future income and redistributed it to the present. When wealth races ahead in this manner, something I call the Icarus effect sets in. Initially, rising wealth raises a country’s growth rate by, among other things, creating a larger pool of capital to support investment. But past a certa...

Jared Blikre of Yahoo Finance reports the stock market just had its best month since the pandemic rebound: Stocks knocked it out of the park in April. Wall Street’s April rebound ended the month with a scoreboard that looks more like 2020 than 2026 — and some of the details look even more like the dot-com era. The S&P 500 ( ^GSPC ) surged over 10% during the month, its best showing since November 2020, while the Nasdaq Composite ( ^IXIC ) jumped more than 15% for its best month since April 2020. The Nasdaq 100 ( ^NDX ) gained nearly 16%, its best month since October 2002. That was not the setup investors had in mind a month ago, with stocks still shaking off the shock of a major war and the bull market suddenly on defense. The rally was broad enough to pull smaller stocks along too. The Russell 2000 ( ^RUT ) climbed more than 12%, also its best month since November 2020. But the S&P 500 equal-weight index rose less than 6%, barely more than half the gain in the...

A month ago, Alex Ortolani of Wealth Management reported that $37 billion Allworth was exploring a majority stake sale: Allworth Financial, the Folsom, Calif.-based registered investment advisor with about $36.5 billion in client assets, is in market with its majority owners, Lightyear Capital and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, for a potential sale, according to two sources familiar with the move.  Allworth is working with banking firm William Blair to lead the sale process, according to the sources. Lightyear Capital and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan bought a majority stake in Allworth from Parthenon Capital in 2020, which had invested in the firm in 2017.  Allworth declined to comment on the move. Lightyear Capital, Ontario Teachers and William Blair did not respond to a request for comment. Since that initial stake in 2017, Allworth has completed over 40 acquisitions and grown to about 40 offices throughout the United States . It has also boosted clie...

The Canadian Press reports  La Caisse and Archimed Diagnostics buy French company Stago: Quebec investment manager La Caisse and health-care private equity firm Archimed Diagnostics have bought Stago, a French company specialized in the analysis of blood coagulation issues. Financial terms of the agreement with the founding Viret family were not immediately available. Stago sells its products in 115 countries and last year had revenue of about $880 million. Martin Longchamps, head of private equity and private credit at La Caisse, said Stago is a recognized leader in blood coagulation analysis. Stago, founded in 1945, develops and manufactures hemostasis equipment and reagents. Stago's leadership team is taking a minority stake as part of the deal.  Stago issued a press release stating it is accelerating its growth with ARCHIMED and La Caisse: For nearly eighty years, Stago has been developing solutions grounded in rigorous scientific standards, driven by a const...