Teachers’ cuts holdings in Canadian banks, insurers

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan reduced its stake in a number of Canadian financial services companies in the first quarter.

In its latest 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the pension fund decreased its holdings of these stocks in the first quarter of 2015 versus the end of the fourth quarter of 2014:

  • Bank of Montreal (221,687 shares compared with 479,923)
  • Bank of Nova Scotia (371,111 shares compared with 655,727)
  • CIBC (151,537 shares compared with 220,650)
  • Manulife (632,860 shares compared with 997,500)
  • Royal Bank of Canada (408,260 shares compared with 643,686)
  • Sun Life Financial (245,207 shares compared with 337,186)
  • TD Bank (558,801 shares compared with 983,622)

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Teachers’ also slashed its stake in Bank of America to 20.9 million shares from 62.5 million shares.

At the same time, the pension fund increased its holdings in these American financial services companies:

  • Aetna (52,758 shares compared with 2,368)
  • Aflac (163,895 shares compared with 76,127)
  • AIG (1,409,802 shares compared with 1,048,130)
  • American Express (444,038 shares compared with 137,128)
  • Blackrock (32,467 shares compared with 5,863)
  • Goldman Sachs (1,171,134 shares compared with 63,672)
  • MasterCard (196,841 shares compared with 149,627)
  • T. Rowe Price (102,524 shares compared with 42,311)
  • State Street (113,499 shares compared with 68,743)
  • Visa (267,058 shares compared with 75,076)

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In the transportation sector, Teachers’ slashed its stake in Canadian National Railway by about half to 274,712 shares while also increasing its holdings in Canadian Pacific to 244,638 shares (compared with 13,238), Kansas City Southern to 19,373 shares (compared with 15,722), and Union Pacific to 698,418 shares (compared with 211,454).

The pension fund doubled its stake in Fiat Chrysler to 105,539 shares while cutting its holdings in Ford by about 40% to 1.99 million shares and General Motors by about 50% to 698,644 shares.

Teachers’ also more than doubled its stake in Sprint to hold nearly 23.5 million shares and increased its holdings in Microsoft by 70% to almost 7.4 million shares.

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The pension fund also owned a number of companies’ shares that are about to be acquired, including Altera (178,919 shares), AOL (23,428 shares), Broadcom (87,851 shares) and Time Warner Cable (301,654 shares).

Institutional investment managers with more than US$100 million in securities traded, such as Teachers’, are required to file a 13F form with the SEC on a quarterly basis.