It’s Hard to Find a Good Deal When Everything is This Expensive, Says Ontario Teachers’ Pension CEO

sale

The CEO of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Ron Mock, spoke at the World Economic Forum last week. One of the topics he touched on was how hard it is to find bargains in the current market, where “everything is expensive” and deals can turn into “non-stop auctions”.

More on his remarks from ai-cio.com:

The head of one of the world’s largest investors has told world leaders in Davos that finding a good deal in current markets has become increasingly tricky.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) CEO Ron Mock said that across asset classes “everything is expensive,” according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

“In the infrastructure space, there is so much money chasing these alternative assets, it’s turned into non-stop auctions,” said Mock. “Infrastructure yields have come down to the single digits, which ignore the regulatory risk.”

His comments echoed a study by Preqin last year showing infrastructure deals were 12% more expensive in 2014 than the previous record set in 2012.

“On the private equity side, there are deals at huge multiples of Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization [EBITDA],” said Mock, “and the spread between public and private yields are very narrow.”

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan manages $140.8 billion in assets as of December 31, 2013.

 

Photo by  Timothy Sulllivan via Flickr CC License

Canada Pensions Look For Opportunities in Energy Slump

oil barrels

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board was weighing a bid for Talisman Energy Inc. – the Board decided against it, at the company ended up being bought Tuesday morning by Repsol SA.

But the interest the Board displayed in troubled Talisman Energy is emblematic of a larger trend: Canada’s pension funds are looking for opportunity in the midst of a serious energy slump.

From Bloomberg:

The 22 percent slump in Canadian energy stocks since late November is just the kind of event that can create opportunity for investors such as pension funds, said Ron Mock, head of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

“Sometimes that happens when everybody is heading out the door and we actually use our long-term advantage to go in,” Mock, chief executive officer of Ontario Teachers, the country’s third-biggest pension fund, said during an interview at Bloomberg’s office in Toronto last week. The energy market doesn’t appear to have quite bottomed for Teachers yet, he said.

Lower energy prices will reduce companies’ cash flows and eventually put pressure on them to weigh their capital plans for next year, Mock said. That will have some producers looking for investors, or outright takeovers, he said.

[…]

Ontario Teachers isn’t consciously counter-cyclical in its investment strategy, Mock said. The focus is on value-oriented, long-term investments, a strategy that tends to provide it with opportunities during both the ups and downs of the market, he said.

[…]

Mark Wiseman, CEO of Canada Pension, said on Nov. 13 that the plunge in oil prices might offer investment opportunities in Canada’s energy sector.

“We are seeing a period now where there may be increasing opportunity in the Western Canadian basin and Canadian energy companies as the market sort of reprices,” Wiseman said.

[…]

One of Ontario Teachers key concerns about investing in Canada’s oil patch is the potential for regulatory changes, Mock said. This doesn’t dissuade the pension fund from investing in the oil and gas sector, he said, but it does raise concerns that certain assets might become too expensive to develop, he said.

The pension fund also will consider investments based on environmental factors.

 

Photo by ezioman via Flickr CC License

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Chief Explains Why Fund Looks Outside of Canada For Direct Investment Opportunities

Canada blank map

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) is among the growing number of pension funds making large direct investments in companies – buying stakes in companies directly as opposed to working with private equity firms.

But the vast majority of the OTPP’s direct investments are made in foreign companies, not Canada. Why is that?

OTPP chief executive Ron Mock explained on Wednesday the methodology that leads the fund to leave Canada behind when making direct investments. From the Financial Post:

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan may prefer to make its direct investments outside of Canada, but don’t interpret that as a sign the institution isn’t confident in the country’s economy, chief executive Ron Mock said on Wednesday.

Mr. Mock made the remarks at The Canada Summit 2014, a conference hosted by The Economist magazine in Toronto. Mr. Mock discussed the biggest opportunities and challenges facing the pension fund.

In the early 2000s, the teachers’ pension plan shifted away from a traditional mix of bonds and equities into direct, private investments, a move Canada’s other major pension plans followed. Mr. Mock, who has been on the job for about a year, said the shift in strategy was necessary to generate the returns it needed to provide retirement income for 300,000 working and retired teachers.

Today, about 70% of the pension fund’s direct, private investments are outside Canada, Mr. Mock said.

[…]

The strategy has come with challenges. Mr. Mock said one of the biggest difficulties is navigating the legal systems and governance requirements of foreign countries when buying large stakes in their companies.

Mr. Mock cited Asian companies that have not yet gone public among investment opportunities he’s keeping an eye on. He said the pension fund doesn’t typically make venture capital investments in Canadian companies because those types of investments are generally in the tens of thousands of dollars, while he’s looking to invest hundreds of millions at a time.

“As a fiduciary, we really do have to focus on earning the returns on behalf of the teachers,” he said.

Another opportunity he’s keeping his eye on is infrastructure investments in Europe and Canada. He said pension funds have a role to play in helping Canada address its crumbling infrastructure problem over the next 10 years.

“I think that is a vital opportunity in Canada,” he said.

The OTPP manages $140 billion in assets.