Alberta Taps Former Canadian PM Harper to Oversee Pension Manager

Layan Odeh and Paula Sambo
·3-min read

(Bloomberg) -- Alberta’s government named former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to lead the board of its public pension fund manager, less than two weeks after firing its chief executive officer and every director.

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Premier Danielle Smith and Finance Minister Nate Horner made the announcement Wednesday, confirming an earlier report from Bloomberg News.

Becoming chair of Alberta Investment Management Corp. gives Harper the influence to reshape an organization managing C$169 billion ($121 billion) of public pension and other government money, with offices from Edmonton to London to Singapore. The former Conservative politician governed Canada from 2006 to 2015 and lives in the western province.

Harper’s name circulated as a potential chair for months. “Mr. Harper’s almost decade-long governance experience as a G7 leader and his strong track record as a steward of tax dollars makes him the ideal candidate to serve our province as chairman of the newly reconstituted Aimco board of directors,” Horner said in an emailed statement.

Alberta reappointed several previous members as board directors, including Navjeet (Bob) Singh Dhillon, Jason Montemurro and James Keohane. The government said the deputy minister of treasury board and finance, currently Katherine White, will be a permanent board member.

Harper has opted not to be paid for his role, Aimco said in a news release.

Horner fired the entire board and CEO Evan Siddall on Nov. 7, saying they had allowed expenses to soar to unacceptable levels. Aimco had been without a permanent chairman since the end of last year. The firm’s operating costs were just shy of C$1.1 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31 — up 45% in three years.

Staff costs ballooned by 71%, and headcount grew by 29% from 2019 to 2023, according to a statement from Horner’s office. Third-party management fees also increased by 96% during the period.

“I don’t think there was much debate about the fact that both the expenses at Aimco and the performance of some portions of that have not been particularly good,” Gavin Graham, chief investment officer of Spire Wealth Management, said on BNN Bloomberg Television.

Still, he said, the government’s move comes with a risk: “Any government that is going to try to interfere too much will obviously run the risk of big backlash in the event that that leads to suboptimal returns.”

Aimco is in the lowest third on cost relative to peers, according to a study by CEM Benchmarking for 2022, the latest such study available. Its costs were 23% lower than those of average peers.

As for returns, Aimco beat its benchmarks in two of the three years Siddall was in charge, and recent internal surveys showed employee morale substantially improving. That gave the board few reasons to question his investment judgment.

In an interview with Bloomberg News on Nov. 15, Smith said hiring a new board is one step in a series of reforms to boost what she called “middling” returns. The leader of the oil-rich Canadian province cited Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which primarily invests in public markets, as a model.

Smith and Horner are seeking a different approach at the money manager as Alberta embarks on a plan to massively increase the Heritage Fund, which invests a portion of the province’s oil and gas royalties for future generations.

--With assistance from Stephanie Hughes.

(Updates with more context beginning in the fifth paragraph.)

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