The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, alongside the Bank of Montreal, is committing $33 million in funding to District Ventures Capital. Founded by financier Arlene Dickinson, the fund focuses on consumer goods-related venture capital. With the new investment, the fund now totals $70 million. Read: PSP Investments takes on Hawaiian farmland “We are pleased to have these institutional investors […]
The British Columbia Investment Management Corp., alongside ATL Partners, are acquiring Valence Surface Technologies Inc., a Houston-based aerospace surface finishing platform. The company has eight facilities in the U.S. and provides treatments like plating, painting and spray coating aerospace and defence assets that need complex finishing to meet engineering specifications, including for Airbus, Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Space Exploration […]
Canadian pension funds are welcoming proposed regulations from the U.S. Department of the Treasury that clarify the sweeping exemption from U.S. tax on real estate available to qualified foreign pension funds. “The previous regulatory framework reduced our demand for real estate in the U.S. and, as importantly, increased the cost and complexity of our structuring,” says […]
Identifying language more commonly used by a certain gender could have bearing on data analysis of socially responsible investment choices. A new metric, formulated by alternative data firm Indexia, measures the relative male- or female-dominated nature of language used by a company. The metric was built through a process of analyzing millions of direct quotations from both […]
Canadian defined benefit pension plans maintained their solvency levels through the second quarter of 2019, according to Mercer’s latest pension health index. The index, which represents the solvency ratio of a hypothetical plan, reached 106 per cent as of June 30, 2019, an increase from 102 per cent at the year’s outset. The current solvency […]
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is selling its student accommodation business Liberty Living to London Stock Exchange-listed Unite Group for about $1.3 billion. The CPPIB will keep a 20 per cent stake in the newly combined company and one seat on its board. When the deal is complete, Unite Students’ assets will total more […]
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has released its first climate change report. Written following the recommendations of the Financial Stability Board’s task force on climate-related financial disclosure, the report outlined the plan’s governance approach and strategy with regard to climate change. “Climate change is one of the biggest and most daunting challenges facing the world.” […]
With renewed volatility prompting money managers back on their toes, equity markets have been leading investment industry discussions over the past few quarters. Against this backdrop, how is fixed income, the other fundamental building block of defined benefit pension portfolios, faring? For David Lafferty, senior vice-president and chief market strategist at Natixis Investment Managers, the […]
When it comes to investing member contributions, the Co-operators Group Ltd.’s defined contribution pension doesn’t look like many other Canadian plans. For one, it doesn’t use a platform approach to investing. Instead, much of its more than $1 billion in assets under management are part of a pre-constructed balanced fund with different target-risk levels with […]
When ESG, the catch-all acronym for environmental, social and governance, is discussed, a lot of terms are thrown around. As these issues increasingly play into institutional investors’ decision-making, they need to know what it all means. Climate change dominates among environmental concerns, but plastic waste is also holding investor attention. Major social issues include preventing […]