The current economic maelstrom, with its high inflation and interest rates, has left many institutional investors operating in uncharted territory — though not Rashid Maqsood, vice-president of treasury at electrical products distributor Rexel North America Inc. His career began in the late 1970s — almost a decade before central banks began setting inflation targets. “It’s […]
Institutional investors are entering a golden period ripe with opportunities in current global and emerging markets, said Karl Dasher, president of Polen Capital, during the Canadian Investment Review‘s 2023 Global Investment Conference. From early 2020 to the end of 2021, the market was flooded with liquidity from the unprecedented combination of fiscal stimulus, U.S. Federal Reserve […]
Global pension assets fell 16.7 per cent to US$47.9 trillion in 2022, driven largely by a correction in fixed income and equities markets, according to a new report by WTW’s Thinking Ahead Institute. While the report found Canada’s pension asset values dropped by about 18 per cent in 2022, as of last August, it held roughly six […]
When Tye McAllister was in middle school, he received a life-changing gift from his father — The Wealthy Barber, a practical guide to financial planning by Canadian investor David Chilton. “Investing became a passion,” says McAllister, senior analyst of pension investments and treasury at ATCO Group of Companies. “I was always trying to pull together […]
The world’s 500 largest asset managers’ total discretionary assets under management increased by 10.2 per cent in 2021, reaching US$131.7 trillion, according to a new report by WTW’s Thinking Ahead Institute. It found North American AUM accounted for more than half (59.9 per cent) of AUM in the top 500 managers, garnering $78.9 trillion by […]
Institutional investors’ best laid plans sometimes go awry — especially following global pandemics. During a presentation at the Canadian Investment Review‘s 2022 Risk Management Conference, Marc Gauthier, treasurer and chief investment officer at Concordia University, said the dramatic events shaping the world in the past two years have challenged the university’s carefully designed investment model. […]
With many defined benefit pension plan solvency ratios at all-time highs, plan sponsors have an excellent opportunity to rethink their approach to investing, according to Shivin Kwatra, head of liability-driven investing portfolio management at Insight Investments. “It is important to highlight two approaches to investing: one [is] traditional — a mean variance framework of maximizing […]
When the University Pension Plan officially launched in July 2021, it did so with Barbara Zvan as its inaugural president and chief executive officer. Fresh from a 25-year career with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, she was appointed by the UPP’s board of trustees in July 2020. While most of the foundational work had been […]
The Canadian Investment Review’s Risk Management Award will go to a pension plan that has successfully implemented a robust approach to its risk management function. This can include implementing de-risking or re-risking or it can showcase day-to-day processes in place for risk management in pension plan investments. Highlights about the three finalists are available below: […]
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 […]