After years of strong performance, the long-term outlook for equities is becoming more muted, says August Cruikshanks, an investment consultant in Eckler Ltd.’s pension and benefits consulting practice. Read: Sounding Board: Checking index concentration key for institutional investors as bubble talk persists At the start of 2025, Eckler’s 20-year expected return for Canadian equities was […]
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is selling its 60 per cent stake in the Sydney Desalination Plant to the Utilities Trust of Australia. The UTA, which previously owned 40 per cent of the plant, will now take full ownership of the facility, which can produce up to 250 million litres of drinking water per day. […]
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Norges Bank Investment Management, reached US$1.7 trillion in assets under management in 2024, taking the No. 1 spot among the world’s top 100 global asset owners, according to a new report by WTW’s Thinking Ahead Institute. Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund dropped to No. 2, currently managing $1.6 trillion, said the […]
An article on Ontario’s proposed changes to preferred pharmacy network agreements was the most-read story on BenefitsCanada.com this past week. Here are the top five human resources, benefits, pension and investment stories of the last week: 1. How Ontario’s proposed changes to preferred pharmacy networks could reshape drug plan costs 2. How predictability in the […]
A joint venture co-owned by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and IndoSpace is acquiring six industrial and logistics parks in India for roughly $471 million. The investment organization is providing $217 million to fund the transaction by IndoSpace Core, which the CPPIB owns a 93 per cent stake in. Structural growth, driven by urbanization […]
The world’s 500 largest asset managers’ assets under management reached US$139.9 trillion at the end of 2024, a 9.4 per cent increase from the previous year, according to a new report by WTW’s Thinking Ahead Institute. It found this increase was driven largely by North American asset managers, which reported an average increase of 13 […]
With the S&P 500 up around 90 per cent over the last five years — the so-called ‘Magnificent 7’ driving nearly 70 per cent of its gains this year — and trillions of dollars planned for artificial intelligence spending, some institutional investors have begun to question whether we are in a bubble and whether a […]
Size matters when it comes to Canada’s much-vaunted model of pension investment. Sebastien Betermier, an associate professor of finance at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management, says the in-house capabilities and direct, private-asset investment that characterize the approach pioneered by the Maple 8 aren’t replicable by just any pension fund. “You need to be really […]
As private market assets become more widely adopted by institutional investors, they open up new, unexpected opportunities. Tom Keenleyside, associate director of investments at Western University, is ready to meet the moment. “We are in the process of scaling up; I think private market investments have become more mainstream among institutional investors. . . . […]
The average Canadian defined benefit pension plan returned 4.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2025, up from 1.6 per cent in the second quarter, according to a new report by the Royal Bank of Canada Investor Services. This growth was driven by a broad-based mix of equity and fixed income contributions, the report […]