Pension Pulse

Layan Odeh of Bloomberg reports  Alberta Fund’s severance costs jump 383% after executive purge: Alberta Investment Management Corp. paid nearly C$6 million ($4.4 million) in severance and other benefits to a departing chief investment officer who was in the job for about 20 months. Marlene Puffer left the public money manager last September, several weeks before the provincial government stunned staff by firing the entire board, Chief Executive Officer Evan Siddall and other executives. The severance disclosure is contained in Aimco’s new annual report, which says the firm shelled out a total of C$7.9 million in termination pay for “key management personnel” during the year, a 383% increase from the previous year. In sacking Siddall and the board, the government accused them of allowing costs to soar as they added new international offices and increased staff. Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was named Aimco’s chair and it’s currently operating under an int...

Brian Evans and Alex Harring of CNBC report  S&P 500 closes at a record Friday, overcoming even more trade angst: The S&P 500  hit fresh records on Friday as traders managed to look past new comments from President Donald Trump tied to U.S.-Canada tariffs. The broad market index’s rise new highs marks a sharp turnaround from the lows seen in April during the height of trade policy tensions. The benchmark added 0.52% and closed at a record of 6,173.07. Earlier in the session, the S&P 500 rose as much as 0.76% to a high of 6,187.68, taking out its previous record of 6,147.43. The Nasdaq Composite , which also hit an all-time high and closed at a record, rose 0.52% to 20,273.46. The Dow Jones Industrial Average  added 432.43 points, or 1%, settling at 43,819.27. Stocks pulled back from their session highs after Trump said on  Truth Social  that trade talks between the U.S. and Canada  were being terminated . Initially, investors had bid up eq...

 Uda Rana of Global News reports the number of Canadians with pension plans jumped by 300K: An additional 293,500 Canadians enrolled as members of a registered pension plan in 2023, Statistics Canada data released Tuesday showed. According to a StatCan report, the number of Canadians who were active members of a registered pension plan (RPP) grew by 4.2 per cent to a total of roughly 7.2 million in 2023. Of these, 4.9 million members were part of a defined benefit plan, which is a type of pension plan in which an employer or sponsor promises a specified pension payment, lump sum or a combination of the two on retirement. In a defined benefit plan, the pension amount depends on an employee’s earnings history, tenure of service and age, rather than on individual investment returns. This is in contrast to defined contribution plans, in which the employee’s pension benefits are determined by the size of their pension pot at retirement, rather than by a predetermined formul...

James Bradshaw of the Globe and Mail reports  B.C. pension manager earned 10% annual return on deals in volatile market: British Columbia Investment Management Corp. earned an average return of 10 per cent for clients last fiscal year, missing its internal benchmark but showing its ability to make deals in a volatile market. The 10-per-cent return combines the performance of Victoria-based BCI’s six largest pension-plan clients for the year that ended March 31. In a “heck of a year” marked by upheaval in investing markets, “we had a good year,” Ramy Rayes, the fund’s executive vice-president of investment strategy and risk, said in an interview. BCI added $21.9-billion of investment income after fees. The internal benchmark BCI uses to measure its performance gained 12.3 per cent. BCI is one of several large Canadian pension funds with broad portfolios of public and private assets that have struggled to keep pace with benchmarks focused on public equities, most notably...