Canada Pension CEO Has Eyes Peeled For Opportunities Amidst Volatility

Canada

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) Chief Executive Mark Wiseman sat down with Reuters for an interview last Friday, and made some interesting comments on how his fund deals with market volatility.

Wiseman said his fund would likely be particularly active in the coming months as fluctuations in commodities and currency markets open up investment opportunities.

Wiseman’s comments, from Reuters:

CPPIB, which manages Canada’s public pension fund, said that while investment deals have been slower in recent months because assets are fully valued, recent sharp movements in commodity and currency markets should help it find acquisitions.

“We are seeing more volatility in markets and that should generate more opportunities for CPPIB,” Chief Executive Mark Wiseman said in an interview.

“If you look at increased volatility, not just in equity markets but in currency markets, in commodity markets, the long-term view and those comparative advantages that we have, in these types of market conditions … our comparative advantages are more valuable,” he said, pointing to CPPIB’s scale, long investment horizon and certainty of assets.

[…]

Wiseman said that while CPPIB did not see deflation as a particularly large risk to the global economy, the world appeared to be moving to a two-speed model, with China and the United States showing growth and Europe and Japan needing “substantial long-term structural reforms” to improve.

“Let’s talk about Europe. It’s a very difficult situation. The economy has continued to underperform since the global financial crisis, and in terms of structural reforms, they have been reasonably slow in coming, for a myriad of reasons,” Wiseman said.

The CPPIB manages $191.3 billion in pension assets.

 

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New Jersey Pension Investment Return Falls Short of Assumed Rate in 2014

New Jersey State House

New Jersey’s pension system earned a 7.27 percent return on its investments in 2014 – down from a 16.9 percent return in fiscal year 2013-14.

The growth fell short of the system’s assumed rate of return.

From NJ.com:

New Jersey’s pension fund earned 7.3 percent on its investments last year, which state officials said beat market expectations.

But those gains didn’t live up to the 7.9 percent annual rate experts say is needed to keep troubled pension fund from adding to its liabilities.

The investments returned 7.27 percent, but were hurt largely because of market volatility in the second half of the calendar year, said Tom Byrne, acting chairman of the State Investment Council.

“For that period of time we were ahead of our benchmark by just a tiny bit but behind the 7.9 percent bogey,” Byrne said. “One period of time only tells you so much.”

[…]

Byrne noted that the investment council’s role is only half the battle. While it manages the state’s investments, it doesn’t have any say in setting or making pension contributions.

“The pension is still underfunded, and we can only do what we can do,” Byrne said.

Governors from both parties have underfunded the pension system since 1996, shortchanging the annual payments or skipping them altogether.

Pension officials defended the system’s recent dive into alternative assets; officials said those investments have earned the system an additional $2.8 billion in returns since 2010.

 

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How Confident Are Institutional Investors Right Now?

pyramis

The results of a recent survey, conducted and released by Pyramis, indicate that institutional investors are more confident than ever about their investment returns.

But funds in Asia and Europe are much more optimistic about market volatility than their counterparts in Canada and the U.S.

The survey of 811 pension fund managers found that Canadian pension funds were the most pessimistic of the bunch about future markets.

From Chief Investment Officer:

Despite the return of volatility, confidence in meeting investment goals has resurged as more than nine in 10 institutional investors said they would hit their targeted returns.

Some 91% of 811 investors told a survey, run by fund manager Pyramis, they believed their goals would be hit over the next five years, a large increase on the 65% who said the same in the company’s 2012 survey.

“While the travails of 2008 are far back enough for investors to feel significantly more confident that they will hit their five-year investment targets for their assets, they still remain concerned that there will be a return to volatility, as has been the case in recent weeks,” said Nick Birchall, head of UK institutional business at Fidelity Worldwide Investment, which distributes Pyramis’ products outside North America.

[…]

Volatility cast the longest shadow on institutional investors, according to the survey. Some 22% cited it as their top concern, while investors in the UK were the most nervous, with 31% saying it was their biggest worry.

However, their peers in the US were also concerned by erratic market moves.

Just 7% of US investors agreed with the following statement: “Volatility is decreasing and market bubbles/crashes will become less frequent.”

Some 10% of their Canadian neighbours agreed, while European and Asian investors took the opposite view, with 79% and 91% respectively thinking the statement was dead on the money.

It’s important to note that the survey was conducted back in June, before recent bouts of market volatility.

Canadian pension funds showed some impressive clairvoyance, as they were by far the most pessimistic of the group back in June: 6 out of 10 Canadian respondents said they anticipated increased market volatility in the near future.

From the Business News Network:

The survey, conducted in June and July, found 60 percent of Canadian pension fund managers believe that over the long term, “volatility is increasing and market bubbles/crashes will become more frequent,” while 42 percent in the U.S. agreed with the statement. However, only 4 percent of pension managers in Europe and 5 percent in Asia agreed volatility is increasing.

The survey included 90 Canadian pension funds representing about 25 percent of all pension plan assets in Canada, Pyramis said.

Mr. Young said he believes the findings reflect the broader global focus of Canadian pension funds, saying funds in other regions are often more inward-looking and focus more on their regional markets. They may have responded based on a consideration of their own local economies, while Canadian pension funds may have been assessing the volatility more broadly in all major markets, he said.

“I do believe that Canada has a very unique and global perspective compared to most countries,” [Pyramis vice-chairman] Mr. Young said.

Video: CalSTRS CIO Talks Long Term Investing And Handling Market Volatility

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Chris Ailman, CIO of the California State Teacher’s Retirement System, sat down with CNBC last week to talk about handling market volatility, re-balancing the fund’s portfolio and being a long-term investor.

Ailman also talks about why CalSTRS invests in hedge funds and why that won’t be changing any time soon.

Video credit: CNBC