The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is buying a portfolio of 73 photovoltaic plants from Q-Energy Ltd., the first step in creating a new platform in Spain that seeks to aggregate further renewable assets. The transaction will be finalized in the coming months, after which Q-Energy will continue to provide comprehensive management of […]
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is opening a new office in Singapore to enhance its capabilities in Asia Pacific. As of the end of 2019, the plan had more than 30 employees in the region and about $15 billion invested there across public equity, private equity and infrastructure. “Expanding our presence in Asia is critical […]
At the time of my last column in May, many pension plan sponsors were catching their breath after watching funding levels take a roller coaster ride. After a steep drop earlier in the year, funding levels were slowly recovering. However, market uncertainty remained and it wasn’t clear what was coming next. Thankfully the last few […]
The vast majority of investors (82 per cent) are satisfied with how their portfolios performed in the first half of 2020, despite some weak results in strategies such as emerging market debt and smart beta, according to a new study of 368 investors with combined assets of approximately US$11 trillion. Following the quickest equity market […]
As part of the federal government’s debt management strategy, it’s increasing long-term debt issuance. In particular, the government will be increasing issuance of the 10-year and 30-year bonds for 2020-2021 to an unprecedented combined amount of $106 billion, according to the federal economic and fiscal snapshot from July 8. The issuance is roughly five times […]
Canadian defined benefit pension plans recovered some of their losses from the start of 2020 in the second quarter off the back of strong public equity gains, according to the Northern Trust Canada universe. With stimulus spending to tackle the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic taking effect in many countries, stock markets rebounded with […]
The outbreak of the novel coronavirus has triggered major corrections in the equity, commodity and debt markets as participants try to gauge the full extent of its impact. It is times like these when the advantages of insurance-linked securities become apparent again. Insurance-linked securities are financial instruments whose performance is driven by the occurrence of […]
As investors begin to digest the extended ramifications of the coronavirus pandemic, certain investment lessons are emerging. For one, investing globally provided diversification opportunities as different regions were impacted by the spread of the virus in different ways, according to a new paper from MSCI Inc. “The coronavirus pandemic started in Asia and gradually spread […]
Trading volume for exchange-traded funds is rising. And as such, more ETF trades are flowing through trading desks. For ETFs with underlying securities that have different characteristics than equities, such as credit instruments or fixed income, it’s sometimes unclear who should be handling these transactions, according to a report by Greenwich Associates based on interviews […]
The company behind the $6.2-billion Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia says it’s made a deal to sell a 65 per cent equity interest in the project. TC Energy Corp. says in a news release that it has entered into an agreement for the sale to KKR and Alberta Investment Management Corp., on behalf of […]