PSP's Annual Public Meeting 2010

PSP Investments' second Annual Public Meeting was held on October 28, 2010. You can consult the website's Annual Public Meetings section to download presentations and listen to audio recordings of the proceedings.Let's first go over some sections of the speaking notes of Paul Cantor, Chair of the Board of Directors:As I observed in the 2010 Annual Report, the first 10 years of PSP Investments were challenging times. According to the Wall Street Journal, the first decade of the 21st century turned out to be the worst ever for US stocks based on records going back to the 1830s. Total returns for the period 2000-2009 amounted to negative 0.5%. That compared with a high of 18% in the 1950s and was even lower than the negative 0.2%...

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Irish NPRF Up 1.9% in Q3

A follow-up to my recent post on the luck of the Irish running out. Bloomberg reports, Irish National Pension Fund Posted 1.9% Return in Third Quarter:Ireland’s National Pensions Reserve Fund earned a return of 1.9 percent to 24.5 billion euros ($34 billion) in the third quarter. The fund’s so-called directed investments in the country’s two biggest banks, Allied Irish Banks Plc and Bank of Ireland Plc, delivered a return of minus 2.5 percent, the NPRF in Dublin said in an e-mailed statement today. The return on the fund’s discretionary portfolio was 3.6 percent. That fund amounted to 17.9 billion euros at the end of September, it said. Donal O'Donavan of the Irish Independent reports, National pension fund loses €400m in AIB and BoI deals:The...

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Squeezed and Opting Out of Pensions?

Ellen Kelleher of the FT reports, Squeezed Britons opt out of pensions:Hundreds of thousands of Britons have taken a holiday from their personal pension contributions, in further proof of the severity with which household budgets have been squeezed by the economic downturn.The latest data from HM Revenue & Customs show that contributions to personal and stakeholder pensions fell by more than £1bn in the 2009-10 tax year.As many as 430,000 fewer UK residents put money away for retirement through these vehicles in the last tax period, a fall of 4.5 per cent, according to the Revenue’s estimates.The decline in pension savings in the UK appears to be turning into a long-term trend. Since the 2007-08 tax year, as many as 730,000 fewer...

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Retirement Disaster Ahead?

Brett Arends of the WSJ reports, Warning: Retirement Disaster Ahead:Don't let the rally in the stock and bond markets fool you. Many Americans are still hurtling towards a retirement disaster. Few realize it. Even many of those running the big pension funds don't know. That's the conclusion of John West and Rob Arnott at Research Affiliates, an investment management firm, in Newport Beach, Calif. In their latest report, "Hope Is Not A Strategy," they have some numbers to back it up."I worry a lot about people reaching their golden years and discovering, 'Oh, I should've saved more,' and 'Oh, I don't qualify for Social Security any more because it's means tested'," says Mr. Arnott, a widely respected market strategist. "We're headed...

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Luck of the Irish Running Out?

John O'Donnell of Reuters reports, Ireland urged to use pension fund to buy bonds:Ireland's finance minister has been urged by some senior advisers to allow the country's 24 billion euro ($33 billion) state pension fund to buy Irish government bonds to support demand, an Irish official said on Wednesday.The senior official, who declined to be named but is familiar with financial policy discussions in the Irish government, said no decision to take such action had been made.A spokesman for Ireland's department of finance, contacted by Reuters, said: "There are no proposals to do this."Tapping the fund, set aside to pay the state old-age pensions as well as pensions for Irish civil servants, could meet stiff political opposition. Roughly 10 billion...

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Are SWFs The New Endowment Model?

Greg bright of top1000funds.com reports, New endowment model: follow the SWFs:Some sort of shape is starting to take place, post-global crisis, as to how the biggest, longest-term investors are spending their money. If the endowment model was the one to follow for the past 20 years, the sovereign wealth fund model may be the one to follow for the next.Endowment-envy swept the world in the early part of this decade, which was probably a decade too late to reap the benefits from following the very clever investment strategies of the likes of Yale and Harvard. By the time of the global financial crisis, the envy had faded. But investors should think about why the endowment model of investing worked so well for as long as it did. If we can isolate...

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Don't Believe The Rally?

I wanted to follow-up on my previous post where Leo de Bever articulated his fears on what will happen when the music stops. Joe Saluzzi, co-founder of Themis Trading, was interviewed on Yahoo Tech Ticker on Monday (see video below):Major averages are hovering near their highest levels since September 2008, but retail investors continue to flee the market. Domestic equity funds have suffered outflows for 24 consecutive weeks through Friday, and over $81 billion has come out of domestic equity mutual funds year to date, according to Morningstar.At the risk of stating the obvious, several factors explain why investors simply don't trust the rally. Twice bitten, thrice shy: Having been burned by the bursting of the tech stock bubble in 2000,...

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Leo de Bever on When The Music Stops

Late Friday afternoon, I had a chance to speak with Leo de Bever, CEO & CIO of the Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo). As always, the conversation was fascinating as we delved deep into issues affecting pension funds.A few weeks ago, AIMCo released its Annual Report 2009/2010. AIMCo's fiscal year ends March 31st, just like that of CPPIB and PSPIB. AIMCo’s total fund return was 12.0% for the year ended March 31, 2010, outperforming the AIMCo Composite Benchmark by 1.2% and the AIMCo Client Composite Benchmark by 1.5% (click on image below to enlarge):AIMCo’s Balanced Fund Composite return was 17.8% for the year ended March 31, 2010, outperforming the Balanced Fund Client Composite Benchmark of 16.9% by 0.9%.What I found particularly...

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Ego Makes Entrepreneurs?

I spent all morning at the Palais des Congrès here in Montreal attending a conference on entrepreneuship which was sponsored by the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal and financial institutions like the Business Development Bank of Canada as part of Small Business Week 2010:The Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal and its team of experts in entrepreneurship – Info entrepreneurs – today announced the programming for Small Business Week 2010 in Montréal. The program will feature a series of activities that will bring together hundreds of entrepreneurs from the Montréal area. “This prestigious event is a special one for Montréal small businesses,” said Michel Leblanc, President and CEO of the Board of Trade. “It combines helpful...

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