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Comment by propter_hoc | Hacker News Reader

The irksome thing here for me, as a resident of Quebec, is that our provincial pension plan recently invested heavily in this project. That's a not insignificant amount of retiree money gambled irresponsibly and lost within months.

Ironically, just as the pension plan announced its investment, the provincial securities regulator announced that they're investigating Celsius for violating securities laws.

Just an embarrassment of a situation overall... Details here (in French): https://ici.radio-canada.ca/recit-numerique/4095/caisse-depo...

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> However, our investigation shows that the Caisse's contribution to this round of financing amounts to $150 million. According to documents released by Celsius to financial authorities in Britain, CDPQ acquired 7,328 Series B shares of the company, at a price of $20,469 each.

Yikes.

Oh thank goodness. I actually thought we put in $600 million

Unfortunately, they may have put more into other rounds. Who makes these decisions? Considering crypto is so new is there even someone expert-level enough to advise a pension?

Is it just me or Canadian pension plans seem to be involved in a disproportionate share of dubious late stage tech investments? The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan has an extensive Crunchbase page. Are there differences in regulations between the United States and Canada?

Looks like they like to go direct to “save on management fees” and “pursue environmental goals,” so they probably get excluded from good deals.

They’ve been getting 9.6% annually since 1990, so maybe they are on to something with their environmental goals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Teachers'_Pension_Plan

Look up the "Canadian Model".

Canadian Pensions like OTPP are run more like private equity funds and they compensate their employees the same way in order to compete in terms of talent in order to generate deal-flow and deal identification.

Traditionally, this has meant above market returns and is one of the reasons that Canadian pensions are generally well funded.

This highlights the difference:

https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2016/05/17/lessons-f...

They bought the top of a bunch of (unprofitable) Indian tech startups as well.

OTPP bought the New Zealand Yellow pages for $US 1.6 billion in 2007[1]. Perfectly timed just as the Internet and Mobile phones took over everything (and just before the GFC hit). Just 3 years later it was a complete mess.[2]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/2007/03/27/nz-yellow-pages-markets-eq...

[2] https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/64397212/yellow-direc...

My god. Even in 2007 one glance at the stack of phone books in any apartment building lobby would have told you how little people were using them even then.

There's gonna be a method to recall these people right?

This is one of the reasons why defined-benefit pension plans need to be eliminated and replaced with defined-contribution plans. Pensions like this are just too risky and create terrible moral hazards.

the biggest moral hazard with defined-benefit plans is making decisions that increase your own personal longevity. The reality is that most Canadian plans have some levers available to cut benefits (primarily by making inflation indexing discretionary).

They also nailed their timing in getting out of oil and gas - just in time for the sector at large to see a face-ripping rally and some of the best cashflows in any industry.

Most fund managers would be fired, or quit, but because it's Green(TM), it was fine and good.

https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/09/28/canadas-oil-indu...

The take away for all Canadians (the CPP is just as bad) is that these pension funds are just one more tax. You will be paid out, just nowhere near commensurate with what you put in.

And that's even before the comical "inflation" adjustments and the intentional lack of currency hedge.

Wow

Will there be riots over the mismanagement of the wealth of millions of people? How much have these incompetent managers destroyed? Esg is a cancer to society.

Are their riots over all the other types of tax? As long as people aren't left destitute in the streets it'll just be a couple of old people learning why people have been screaming about ESG for the last couple of decades/that people wearing suits also lie.

Averaging 9.6 % annually since inception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Teachers'_Pension_Plan. If this is cancer. I’ll have some of it. (Ironically, getting out of tobacco is about as far as their ESG seems to go).

It's pretty clear here that you have no idea what you're talking about. These pensions are only available for public service workers, and they have a long history of doing quite well despite the obvious mis-steps.

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