While Canada’s financial system was fit for purpose across decades of liberal democratic order, it’s important to look at how the system should be structured in the future, said Mark Zelmer, former deputy superintendent of financial institutions at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions and a fellow-in-residence at C.D. Howe Institute. Speaking in […]
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 […]
Not everyone can say they’ve spent two decades at the same organization, but Candy Wong, portfolio manager of external managers and international strategies at Manitoba’s Civil Service Superannuation Board, is now in her 21st year at the public sector pension plan. “I don’t think you can foresee where you’re going to be, especially in finance. […]
A new regime of higher bond yields is pushing defined benefit pension plan sponsors around the world to diversify asset holdings and increase liability-driven investment flows, according to a new report by FTSE Russell. Despite a nearly 10-year low for credit spreads, high absolute yields increased discount rates sharply for DB plans, particularly in the […]
Despite several bumps in the decade since the 2008/09 financial crisis, the swift and brutal crash in global equity prices when the coronavirus was declared a pandemic sent pension investors reaching for their playbooks to implement defensive strategies to mitigate the damage. “People have worked very hard at just acting on the set strategies that […]
While inflation never materialized after the last financial crisis and the subsequent economic expansion, this time will be different, said Erik Weisman, portfolio manager and chief economist at MFS Investment Management, when speaking at the Canadian Investment Review’s Investment Innovation Conference in November. After the global financial crisis, quantitative easing didn’t generate inflation because the […]
Despite the low interest rate environment, it still makes sense for defined benefit pension plan sponsors to adopt a liability-driven investment strategy, said Serge Lapierre, global head of LDI at Manulife Investment Management, during a webinar sponsored by the firm on Monday. LDI investing is a risk management framework, he noted. “It’s not an asset […]
The private equity market was on a hot streak coming into 2020 and despite the economic wreckage caused by the coronavirus, fundraising has generally held up, said Jamie Becker, counsel for private equity and pension fund investments at Torys LLP, when speaking at the Canadian Investment Review’s 2020 Global Investment Conference in September. “There was […]
While factor behaviour tends to be consistent in market crashes and corrections, individual factor performance varies over the medium term. As such, institutional investors should maintain diversified exposure across key equity factors including value, quality, momentum, size and low volatility, according to a new paper by Mercer. The paper explored the past three financial crises: […]
The volatility caused by the coronavirus pandemic made the first quarter of 2020 rough for many Canadian defined benefit pension plans. In early June, the Local Authorities Pension Plan Corp., which is mandated to invest with the Alberta Investment Management Corp., said it began the year with $50.6 billion in assets under management and ended […]