Stephen Harper’s title in combine as potential head of AIMCo

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Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper is amongst these being thought-about to chair Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo), the $160-billion pension and endowment supervisor whose board of administrators and chief govt had been purged final week by the Alberta authorities.

Two sources conversant in occasions on the funding supervisor say Harper’s title has been within the combine for no less than 10 months, which coincides with when Mark Wiseman, a seasoned pension govt and former CEO of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, vacated the chair function on the finish of final 12 months.

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The hypothesis has grown “louder,” nevertheless, because the authorities jettisoned all 10 administrators and a handful of key executives together with chief govt Evan Siddall, in response to one supply, who requested anonymity as a result of delicate nature of AIMCo governance.

Alberta Treasury Board President and Finance Minister Nate Horner blamed rising workers numbers and prices — together with salaries and third-party administration charges — for the shakeup, declaring a “reset” on the arms-length funding supervisor. But sources conversant in occasions on the Crown company, which manages funds together with pensions, endowments, and the provincial authorities’s Heritage Savings Trust Fund, say there had been tensions between the group and the federal government for months over different points. These included AIMCo’s worldwide growth via new workplaces in New York and Singapore, and the federal government’s give attention to driving investments in Alberta.

The shakeup at AIMCo got here as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith prepares to unveil her authorities’s plan to spice up the scale of the AIMCo-managed Heritage Savings Trust Fund, which, in response to its web site, “produces earnings to help authorities applications important to Albertans.”

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As an interim step after the AIMCo shakeup, Horner was put in as board chair whereas Alberta’s deputy minister of govt council, Ray Gilmour, the province’s high bureaucrat, will function the interim CEO.

Harper actually has bona fides in Alberta. He grew to become related to Western Canada after shifting from Toronto to Calgary, the place he earned a grasp’s diploma in economics, and after leaving politics he labored out of the Calgary workplace of worldwide legislation agency Denton’s, the place he suggested purchasers on market entry and managing international geopolitical and financial danger.

Following his authorities’s defeat in 2015, Harper established a non-public consultancy referred to as Harper & Associates in partnership together with his former chief of workers Ray Novak.

It isn’t recognized how Harper is in taking a job with AIMCo, a risk first reported by Bloomberg earlier Tuesday, and he couldn’t be reached for remark. Some shut observers marvel if he would wish to wade into the present drama surrounding the funding administration group or pull himself away from his post-political ventures within the personal sector.

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“I ponder if Harper would take the job, given all of the unfavorable publicity related to the (Alberta authorities’s) slash-and-burn strategy?” stated Keith Ambachtscheer, director emeritus of the International Centre for Pension Management.

Harper has, nevertheless, proven an inclination towards the funding administration world. In late 2023, he 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 12 months, in response to Reuters report in February.

According to his web site, Harper can also be a director of Colliers International Group Inc., Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. and Recover Inc.

• Email: bshecter@nationalpost.com

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