Stephen Harper named chair of AIMCo, 3 administrators reappointed

Article content material

Former prime minister Stephen Harper has been appointed chair of Alberta Investment Management Corp., a transfer that has been extensively anticipated for the reason that province fired AIMCo’s board of administrators and relieved chief government Evan Siddall of his duties lower than two weeks in the past.

Three of these board members fired from the province’s $169-billion pension and endowment fund supervisor have been reappointed Wednesday: Jason Montemurro, Jim Keohane and Bob Dhillon. But the Alberta authorities has additionally established a everlasting board seat, unpaid, for the deputy minister of treasury board and finance, so as “to make sure extra constant communications between AIMCo and Alberta’s authorities.”

Article content material

In a press release about Harper’s appointment as chair, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith mentioned the previous prime minister shall be instrumental within the province’s plans to extend the scale of its $25 billion Heritage Savings Trust Fund, which is managed by AIMCo, to greater than $250 billion over the subsequent 25 years.

“We’re extremely lucky that Mr. Harper has agreed to tackle this management function with AIMCo,” Smith mentioned. “His appointment, and that of the remainder of the board, are a powerful step ahead in giving all Albertans confidence within the long-term sustainability and success of AIMCo.”

Harper mentioned he was taking the function pro-bono as “a significant act of public service to my adopted dwelling province of the final 46 years.”

He mentioned he feels “uniquely positioned to assist the group enhance its governance,” and famous that Canadian pensions have a world popularity for his or her skilled operations, upstanding ethics and prudent danger administration.

“I wish to see AIMCo additional embody these values and to positively contribute to this tradition,” Harper mentioned within the assertion, including that he’s trying ahead to working with the brand new board of administrators and AIMCo’s new administration staff.

Article content material

Article content material

The Alberta authorities, together with finance minister Nate Horner, have maintained that the weird step of firing the board and 4 members of the administration staff together with Siddall was taken as a result of AIMCo’s prices had risen with out commensurate returns.

But former chair Kenneth Kroner disputed that evaluation within the letter to Horner and a number of other sources have detailed rising tensions between the federal government and the pension administration group over the previous yr, with many of those sources saying the federal government made clear it needed to exert extra management over AIMCo.

Horner took over as chair following the board purge, a place he relinquished Wednesday.

Harper left politics after the Conservatives misplaced the 2015 election to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, and has been concerned in non-public enterprise ventures since, together with turning into a working fairness accomplice at Azimuth Capital Management, an energy-focused non-public fairness agency. He additionally teamed up with former Carl Icahn protégé Courtney Mather to launch Vision One Management Partners, an activist fund that took on U.S. division retailer operator Kohl’s earlier this yr, in response to a Reuters report in February. 

Article content material

He has additionally been on the boards of a handful of firms together with Colliers International Group Inc., Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. and Recover Inc.

Keohane, one of many administrators reappointed to AIMCo’s board Wednesday, is well-known within the pension world, having efficiently led the Healthcare of Ontario Pension (HOOPP) between 2011 and 2020.

Less well-known within the sector are Dhillon and Montemurro. Montemurro’s preliminary appointment to the AIMCo board in March raised eyebrows inside and out of doors the funding administration group due to his connection to Harper, who was seen as the federal government’s favoured candidate to chair the board for months following Mark Wiseman’s departure from the function on the finish of 2023. Both Montemurro and Harper labored at Azimuth Capital Management.

Naheed Nenshi, chief of Alberta’s NDP Party, mentioned in an interview final week that the selection of Harper may not sit effectively with some pensioners rattled by the boardroom and government purge that additionally claimed three members of Siddall’s staff.

“It would take quite a lot of work for him to persuade the monetary markets that he’s excited about most return for pensioners, relatively than the creation of a piggy financial institution fund for the federal government to spend money on tasks that it desires to spend money on,” Nenshi mentioned.

Article content material

On Wednesday, the leaders of 9 of Alberta’s largest unions representing a whole lot of 1000’s of staff and retirees, wrote a letter to Smith demanding illustration on the AIMCo board.

“This shouldn’t be your authorities’s cash,” the letter mentioned. “It is the retirement financial savings of practically 500,000 working and retired Albertans.”

• Email: bshecter@nationalpost.com

Bookmark our web site and help our journalism: Don’t miss the enterprise information you might want to know — add financialpost.com to your bookmarks and join our newsletters right here.

Article content material