Pension Pulse

Tyler Choi of Real Estate News Exchange reports that Oxford will convert a historic London office building to life sciences hub: Oxford Properties Group and its partner Pioneer Group plan to convert a historic 300,000-square-foot office building in London, U.K., into a life sciences hub, expanding Oxford's global push into the sector. The Toronto-based real estate investor and developer is collaborating with London-based Pioneer, a real estate developer and operator with a focus on life sciences and technology facilities. In the announcement, Oxford and Pioneer say they will turn Victoria House in Bloomsbury Square, located in central London, into a 220,000-square-foot life sciences hub with 80,000 square feet of office, amenity, meeting and retail spaces. The building will host the BioIndustry Association (BIA), the trade association for U.K. life sciences companies. The first phase of the transition is expected to be complete in August 2024. Abigail Shapiro, the he...

Amir Barnea wrote another op-ed for the Toronto Star slamming CPP Investments for investing a third of its assets in private equity when Warren Buffet shuns it: When Canada’s national pension plan reported financial results in May, one fact really stood out for me: a full third of its assets — about $190 billion — are invested in private equity. Stocks make up 24 per cent of its investments, bonds make up 13 per cent, and real estate just nine per cent. Private equity is by far CPP Investments biggest bet. But what is private equity exactly? Different from public equity, where investors buy a stake in a publicly listed company, private equity refers to the private ownership of non-listed firms or of those that were once public and have been since taken private. CPP Investments invests in private equity in two ways. The first is via direct investments, where it holds ownership stakes that vary from passive, minority positions, up to 100% control of private companies. The se...

Love Liman of Bloomberg News reports Sweden’s property rout drags down result of another pension fund: Sweden’s pension system is increasingly caught up in a property crisis that’s hit commercial landlords, with one of the state-owned pension funds joining peers that have taken losses on its investments in real estate assets. Forsta AP-fonden, more commonly known as AP1, saw the value of its investments in properties shrink by 7%, or 5.2 billion kronor ($450 million) in the six months through June. Real estate assets were the biggest drag, followed by private equity funds (-0.77%) and fixed income securities (-0.35%). “Very few transactions took place on the market during the period, leading to valuations depreciating somewhat, particularly in the Nordics,” Chief Executive Officer Kristin Magnusson Bernard said in a statement. “In markets where external valuers made larger write-downs more rapidly, such as the UK, the market seemed to stabilize faster,” she said. The deve...

Keith Ambachtsheer wrote an op-ed for the Globe and Mail on how the Thames Water crisis offers cautionary tale for pension funds investing in private-market assets: There has been an unfolding management and financial crisis at giant British water and sewage utility Thames Water. Its owners now face a Hobson’s choice of pouring in billions of fresh capital to shore up the utility, or walking away to leave the British government picking up the pieces. The utility’s owners are mainly pension funds, including two from Canada. The Thames Water debacle raises questions of the suitability of this kind of private-market investment for pension funds. In principle, as an asset securing future pension payment obligations, infrastructure should make for an ideal pension fund investment. But the case of Thames Water shows that is not always the case in practice. What is the actual exposure of pension funds to infrastructure investments, and to other private-market investments such ...

Business Wire reports that Norway's sovereign fund tops global transparency ranking: TORONTO — Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Government Pension Fund Global, has topped the list of the most transparent funds according to the Global Pension Transparency Benchmark’s 2023 findings . Reflecting the heightened focus on transparency and improved practices, the race was tight among the top funds with the first three funds separated by only one point each. CPP Investments and AustralianSuper came in second and third overall. The Global Pension Transparency Benchmark , a collaboration between Top1000funds.com and CEM Benchmarking, is a world first global benchmark measuring the transparency of disclosures of 15 pension systems across the value generating measures of cost, governance, performance and responsible investments. It ranks countries on public disclosures of key value generation elements for the five largest pension fund organisations within each country....