Despite short-term headwinds and headlines, institutional investors must maintain conviction in their long-term strategy, focusing on portfolio construction to build resiliency and generate compelling risk-adjusted returns, according to Michael Tsourounis, managing partner and head of real estate at Hazelview Investments. During a session at the Canadian Investment Review’s 2025 Alternative Investment Conference, he said the best […]
Institutional investors are a financing cornerstone amid surging global demand for infrastructure and the need to upgrade and secure projects against climate change risks. The increasing need for institutional backing is well timed, says Benjamin Abramov, partner and global head of infrastructure at Aon, adding increased risk from uncertain trade policies and inflation levels are […]
The increasing size of alternative investments may be driving down their benefit for institutional investors, says Stephen Johnston, director at Omnigence Asset Management. “There are trillions of dollars in those strategies. How can they generate alpha now? Because when you get to that size you start to replicate market returns.” Read: 66% of institutional investors […]
Vestcor Inc. achieved an overall investment portfolio return of 12.2 per cent as at Dec. 31, 2024, surpassing its benchmark by 0.1 per cent. In a report, the New Brunswick-based investment manager said its total assets grew by $2 billion to $23.1 billion in 2024. Read: Vestcor returns 7.5% for 2023, amid rising inflation, high […]
Rather than a single defined contribution plan sponsor tackling the decumulation dilemma alone, decisions need to be reframed as a decumulation ecosystem, said Nicole Lomax, vice-president and portfolio manager in institutional asset allocation at TD Asset Management Inc. During a session at Benefits Canada’s 2025 DC Plan Summit, she outlined the five decumulation priorities based […]
The investment world is using insufficient methods to deal with long-term development challenges, which are impeding our ability to realize environmental, social and governance goals globally, said John Gilmore, investment analyst and portfolio manager at Martin Currie, part of Franklin Templeton, during the Canadian Investment Review’s 2024 Investment Innovation Conference. Despite the sustainable development goals […]
There’s a distinct window of opportunity for institutional investors to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns through refurbishing brown buildings in Europe to make them operationally carbon neutral, said Lucy Swinton, investment director at Fidelity International, during the Canadian Investment Review’s 2023 Global Investment Conference. Environmental, social and governance — particularly the ‘E’ aspects — is increasingly becoming a disruptive […]
Canada’s Maple 8 — the country’s largest eight public pension plans that manage a total of about $2 trillion in assets — use similar governance structures to consistently deliver strong returns. Pension systems around the world are difficult to manage, said Sebastien Betermier, an associate professor of finance at the Desautels Faculty of Management at […]
Canadian institutional investors should have a strategic allocation to emerging market debt, Ward Brown, fixed income portfolio manager at MFS Investment Management, explained during his session. EM debt has two of the key characteristics needed for a strategic allocation. First, it is a good diversifier because it has low correlations with other assets commonly found […]
What a difference a year makes. At this time in 2019, initial reports of a novel virus to be called COVID-19 were just beginning to come out of China, and the pandemic was still months from becoming front-page news around the world. Investors were busy instead planning for another regular year in 2020, setting return […]