Pension Pulse

Jacques Poitras of the CBC reports  N.B. pension fund managers accused of costing tech investors millions: The company that manages billions of dollars in pension funds for thousands of New Brunswick public sector employees and retirees is being accused of causing financial losses for hundreds of investors across Canada. Fredericton-based Vestcor Inc. and one of its senior executives are the targets of a petition filed in British Columbia that is seeking court approval for a class-action lawsuit. The company is accused of falsely inflating the value of a corporate merger between two technology companies. Vestcor invests the pension contributions of New Brunswick civil servants and other public sector employees in various investment vehicles, including stocks. According to the petition application, Vestcor was the majority shareholder in Exro Technologies, and “orchestrated and significantly influenced” Exro’s 2024 merger with SEA Electric Inc., in which Vestcor also owned...

On Tuesday, OMERS Private Equity announced the sale of CBI Health’s home care business to Extendicare: Transaction delivers value to OMERS members and positions company for expanded patient care Toronto — OMERS Private Equity is pleased to announce that Paramed Inc. , a wholly-owned subsidiary of Extendicare Inc. (TSX: EXE) has signed an agreement to acquire CBI Health LP’s (“CBI Health”) home care business, which operates under CBI Home Health LP (“CBI Home Health”). The closing of the transaction is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2026 pending final regulatory and related approvals. Since its acquisition of CBI Health in 2011, OMERS Private Equity has worked closely with the leadership team to grow the company into one of the largest providers of integrated health care services, including physiotherapy, rehabilitation services and home care services. CBI Home Health, the company’s home care division, has also experienced remarkable growth, expanding ...

The Globe and Mail published an article from GTA's Top Employers on how UPP is focused on building an intentional culture: Most veteran employees have clocked decades with their company. For Nirupa Muthurajah, it’s only taken three years to earn that title at the University Pension Plan Ontario (UPP), Canada’s newest defined benefit pension. When the fund offered her a job in 2022, Muthurajah says it was an easy yes. After a decade in institutional investing at two large Canadian “Maple Eight” pensions and a local family office, she found that UPP’s mission to provide retirement security for university-sector employees resonated with her. Plus, she was getting in on the ground floor. “What excited me most was the chance to make an impact at the ground level and shape the foundational framework from the very beginning,” said Muthurajah, UPP’s director and equity strategies lead for active public markets. Part of laying the foundation is building an “intentional” cultu...

Last week, I had a Teams meeting with  Rhynhardt Roodt , Ninety One's head of the 4Factor investment team and co-portfolio manager of the Global Equity and Global Strategic Equity strategies. Rhynhardt was in Winnipeg visiting clients and I had a chance to talk markets with him and get into their strategy.  I want to thank Ninety One's Jeannie Dumas for setting up the meeting as well as Katherine Tweedie who co-heads the North America Institutional Client Group at Ninety One, and participated on the call. To begin with, Jeannie sent me this in her initial email:  Rhynhardt is Head of 4Factor at Ninety One, which has just reached its 25 year anniversary as has the Global Equity Strategy , which currently sits at $25.4 billion AUM as at 30 September 2025 .  Additionally, I have included a few bullets from his 2026 outlook which he is currently pulling together: Looking ahead to 2026 Divergent fiscal and monetary cycles and the durability of the AI investmen...

CAAT Pension Plan CEO and Plan Manager Derek Dobson wrote  an  op-ed for TheFutureEconomy.ca , where he explores how Canada can turn retirement income into an economic engine as our workforce ages, examining the long-term benefits of modern workplace pensions that deliver lifetime income at scale: Canada will soon join the ranks of countries like Japan, Italy, and Finland that have more than 20% of their population over the age of 65. As a “super-aged” society, we will face unique challenges and opportunities as we adapt to the largest age cohort retiring from the workforce. Now is the time to focus on modernizing retirement income to tap into new sources of economic value.  As the CEO of one of Canada’s fastest-growing pension plans, with employers across 20 industries, I’ve been working with leaders on the strong business case to improve retirement security. Increasingly, they’re saying that efficient, risk-managed retirement programs can significantly ...

Michelle Bellefontaine of CBC News reports  Alberta tries to legislate ban on lawsuits about AIMCo losses: The Alberta government is proposing new legislation to prevent public sector pensions from suing the Alberta Investment Management Corp., or AIMCo, for decisions made before November 2024. Bill 12, the Financial Statutes Amendment Act (No. 2), introduced in the Alberta legislature Tuesday, aims to solve a problem for the government that has existed since 2020 when AIMCo lost $2.1 billion in trading. AIMCo manages pensions for Alberta public sector workers. The Local Authorities Pension Plan (LAPP), the Public Service Pension Plan (PSPP) and the Special Forces Pension Plan (SFPP) have been trying to recover about $1.3 billion in losses since then via arbitration. A Court of King’s Bench ruling from 2023 found that AIMCo and the Alberta government would both be held liable for the losses if the pension plans were successful in their arbitration case. On Tuesday, Finan...

The New Indian Express reports  CPP Investments and IndoSpace acquire six industrial and logistics parks across country: CHENNAI: Professional investment management firm Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) and supply chain infrastructure platform IndoSpace on Tuesday announced the acquisition of six industrial and logistics parks for Rs 30 billion (471 million Canadian dollars) by IndoSpace Core, a JV between CPP and IndoSpace set up in 2017. This acquisition strengthens IndoSpace Core’s position as India’s largest operator of stabilised industrial and logistics real estate. CPP Investments will commit INR 14 billion (C$217 million) to fund the acquisition. CPP Investments owns 93% of IndoSpace Core. The six assets collectively span 380 acres with a leasable area of approximately nine million square feet, adding to IndoSpace Core’s portfolio of fully developed, income-generating parks. These projects are located in Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, ...

Privina Ramanan of Private Debt Investor reports La Caisse looks to double its private credit portfolio in the next five years:  Private credit has become a significant asset class for Canadian institutional investor La Caisse (formerly CDPQ) as it looks to double its exposure in the next five years. Speaking to Private Debt Investor , the institution revealed that the team sees a lot of opportunity in the asset class. A predominant portion of its private credit activities are reserved for direct lending, but in the past five years it has added exposure through other complementary strategies. La Caisse has four verticals in which it invests in private credit – corporate credit, infrastructure financing, real estate finance and capital solutions, which focuses on opportunities in asset-backed strategies for tangible and financial assets. For corporate credit, the team has been looking at large unitranche deals but it also covers mid-market opportunities in specific sect...

It's that time of the year again where we get a sneak peek into the portfolios of the world's top money managers, with a 45-day lag. And in this market, 45 days is a lifetime because things change on an hourly basis. This was a crazy week trading. I will first give you the list of symbols I'm tracking daily this week: AAPL, GOOG, AMD, AVGO, MU, NVDA, MSFT, AMZN, TSLA, META, CLS, ORCL, BE, OKLO. Then, let's see what were the worst performing large cap US stocks this week: Not surprisingly, with bitcoin hitting a fresh low of $84,100, down 11% this week, anything related to crypto got obliterated. But there were other stocks like Micron (MU) that also got hit hard as did Oracle (ORCL), Palantir (PLTR) and a bunch of other high flyers like quantum computing stocks (see the full list here ).  Why am I sharing you this list of stocks that got dinged hard this week? Because I'm 100% confident these are the stocks big hedge funds are buying to close out their year. That da...