Column
Manager Watch
Practitioner-grade profiles of managers across hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, and traditional asset classes. Strategy notes, performance reviews, terms changes, succession events. Canadian and cross-border focus.
Manager Watch
Alberta Investment Management Corporation closed 2025 with $194.7 billion in client AUM, a 7.5% Total Fund return and a 7.6% Balanced Fund return, both underperforming benchmarks by 2.7%. AIMCo's distinguishing structural feature is its client roster: nine Alberta public-sector pension plans (LAPP is the largest), four endowment funds including the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund (described by AIMCo as 'a pioneer among sovereign wealth funds'), four government funds, three insurance funds, and three specialty funds. This primer reads the structure.
Jacob Cesarone May 29, 2026
Manager Watch
British Columbia Investment Management Corporation closed fiscal 2025 (year ended March 31, 2025) with $295 billion in gross AUM and a 10% combined-pension-plan return. It serves 32 BC public-sector clients including an Indigenous settlement trust, manages roughly 85% of assets in-house, and has produced $9.3 billion in cumulative value-add since inception. This primer reads the structure.
Jacob Cesarone May 29, 2026
Manager Watch
Burgundy Asset Management was a leading independent Canadian asset-manager boutique from its 1990 founding through 2024. In 2025, Burgundy joined BMO Financial Group and now operates as a separate line of business inside the bank, maintaining the investment philosophy, people, and client-first principles that defined the firm for over three decades. This primer is the structural read of the transition and the firm.
Jacob Cesarone May 29, 2026
Manager Watch
Beutel, Goodman & Company Ltd. is a five-decade Canadian fundamental-value asset manager headquartered in Toronto. The ownership structure is the structural feature worth marking: 51% broadly owned by employees, 49% minority-held by the US publicly-listed Affiliated Managers Group. The investment philosophy is fundamental bottom-up value with an explicit focus on capital preservation and downside protection. This primer is the structural read.
Jacob Cesarone May 29, 2026
Manager Watch
La Caisse, formerly CDPQ, is the world's twentieth-largest asset owner and the second-largest Canadian institutional pension manager, with CAD $517 billion in net assets at the end of 2025. Its structure is distinct from the federally-chartered Canadian peers: it manages 48 separate Québec public-sector depositors, of which the nine largest account for 96.6% of net assets, and it operates under the Act respecting the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec rather than federal pension legislation. This primer reads the structure.
Jacob Cesarone May 29, 2026
Manager Watch
Fiera Capital is a publicly-listed Canadian asset manager that frames itself as a 'pure-play asset manager, independent by design.' Six named subsidiary platforms cover real estate, infrastructure, infrastructure debt, private debt, private credit, and the Comox agricultural-private-markets platform. This primer is the structural read; the financial numbers come from Fiera Capital's investor-relations disclosures, which a follow-up Manager Watch will read directly.
Jacob Cesarone May 29, 2026
Manager Watch
Mawer Investment Management is the natural opening profile for the asset-manager column. The Calgary-headquartered, privately-owned, independent firm manages approximately $66.8 billion in assets across all major asset classes for individual and institutional investors. The 'Be Boring. Make Money.™' investment approach has been the firm's stated discipline for over 50 years. This primer is the structural read.
Jacob Cesarone May 29, 2026
Manager Watch
The Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan is the smallest of the Maple 8 by net assets, the second-smallest membership population in the cohort, and the standout long-horizon performer against benchmark, by a wide margin. The 10-year annualized return is 7.8% versus a 5.9% 10-year benchmark, a 190-basis-point per-annum spread that is the largest in the cohort. This primer reads the structure that produced that result.
Jacob Cesarone May 29, 2026
Manager Watch
Letko Brosseau was founded in 1987 by Peter Letko and Daniel Brosseau, both senior managers at the CN Investment Division before launching the firm. The investment approach has been pursued unchanged for 38 years across all asset classes, the firm uses no external managers, and the operating posture is investment-management-only. This primer is the structural read.
Jacob Cesarone May 29, 2026
Manager Watch
The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System closed 2025 at $145.2 billion in net assets, a 6.0% net return, and a funded ratio of 99%, the only one in the Maple 8 cohort below 100%. The 3.70% real discount rate gives the technical context, the 10-year 7.1% versus a 7.3% benchmark shows the long-horizon read, and the Oxford Properties subsidiary plus the separately-published infrastructure head role both signal how OMERS organises its business. This primer reads the position.
Jacob Cesarone May 29, 2026
Manager Watch
Public Sector Pension Investment Board, known as PSP Investments, closed fiscal 2025 (year ended March 31, 2025) with $299.7 billion in net assets under management, a 13.2% year-over-year AUM increase, and a position as the third-largest among Canada's public pension investors. This primer is the structural read; the F2025 detailed performance numbers come from the 2025 Annual Report (PDF), and the F2026 cycle had not yet released at the time of publication.
Jacob Cesarone May 29, 2026
Manager Watch
Prime Quadrant is a Toronto-headquartered multi-family office serving roughly 225 ultra-high-net-worth families, with approximately CAD $23 billion (USD $16.2 billion) in Assets Under Consultation as of Q3 2024. The operating posture is unusually clean for the MFO category: flat-fee compensation, no proprietary products, retainer-based engagement, and a proprietary Four-Quadrant Framework that organises the practice around capital, person, family, and impact. This primer is the structural read.
Jacob Cesarone May 29, 2026
Manager Watch
What CPP Investments is, where it came from, how it is governed, and what readers can expect from the column's future coverage of one of the largest allocators in the world. A primer; numerical performance and current portfolio analysis are deferred to a separate piece grounded in the F2026 Annual Report.
Jacob Cesarone May 28, 2026
Manager Watch
Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan released its 2025 results on March 10, 2026: 6.7% total-fund net return, $279.4 billion in net assets, $31.2 billion preliminary funding surplus, 13th consecutive year fully funded. Underneath the headline, the asset-class breakdown tells the story: venture growth +30.2% (including Anthropic Series F), private equity -5.3% on disciplined year-end valuation marks, and an honest -5.0% versus a benchmark concentrated in the AI-tied US large-caps.
Jacob Cesarone May 28, 2026