O M E R S
ONTARIO MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES
RETIREMENT SYSTEM
Table of Contents
OXFORD
BOREALIS
VC
BOD
OXFORD PROPERTIES
Canada pension fund in Paris property drive
One of Canada’s biggest pension funds is stepping into the continental European property market by making its first Paris purchase in what it plans will be a €1bn spending spree.
Oxford Properties, the real estate arm of giant Ontario fund Omers, has bought a 237,000 sq ft building in Rue Blanche, central Paris, from the Carlyle Group for €263m.
The company has accumulated a €3bn list of assets in London since it first crossed the Atlantic in 2008, including the City’s most recently completed skyscraper, the Cheesegrater.
Its move into Paris is the fund’s first step into continental European offices.
Michel Vauclair, an Oxford Properties senior vice-president, said it aimed to build up its Paris portfolio to €1bn in the next three years.
It will focus on “assets where we can drive value through active asset management . . . and where we believe that current values do not reflect future market improvements”, Mr Vauclair said.
Until recently the Paris property market has been sluggish, partly as a result of the country’s economic weakness and political uncertainty. But Mr Vauclair said that Oxford Properties sees “the prospect for significant growth to come through infrastructure improvements and a broader economic recovery”.
One of Canada’s biggest pension funds is stepping into the continental European property market by making its first Paris purchase in what it plans will be a €1bn spending spree.
Oxford Properties, the real estate arm of giant Ontario fund Omers, has bought a 237,000 sq ft building in Rue Blanche, central Paris, from the Carlyle Group for €263m.
The company has accumulated a €3bn list of assets in London since it first crossed the Atlantic in 2008, including the City’s most recently completed skyscraper, the Cheesegrater.
Its move into Paris is the fund’s first step into continental European offices.
Michel Vauclair, an Oxford Properties senior vice-president, said it aimed to build up its Paris portfolio to €1bn in the next three years.
It will focus on “assets where we can drive value through active asset management . . . and where we believe that current values do not reflect future market improvements”, Mr Vauclair said.
Until recently the Paris property market has been sluggish, partly as a result of the country’s economic weakness and political uncertainty. But Mr Vauclair said that Oxford Properties sees “the prospect for significant growth to come through infrastructure improvements and a broader economic recovery”.
Blackstone Skyscraper Sale Opens Door for Oxford In Boston
For four years, Toronto-based Oxford Properties Group has been yearning to buy office towers in Boston as part of its push into U.S. commercial property.
On Thursday, it finally broke in.
Oxford– in a partnership with the asset management arm of J.P. Morgan Chase JPM -4.24% & Co. – bought four office towers totaling 2.2 million square feet in the city from Blackstone Group LPBX -1.32%, finalizing the deal yesterday. Blackstone, advised by Eastdil Secured, first agreed this spring to sell the four towers plus a fifth – subsequently sold to another buyer – for about $2.1 billion, according to people familiar with the deal.
“Large institutional trades don’t happen often here,” said Andrew Trickett, who heads Oxford’s office portfolio in the U.S. The buildings bought by the Oxford-J.P. Morgan venture are 225 Franklin St., 60 State St. and One Memorial Drive in Cambridge. Oxford bought the fourth, 125 Summer St., on its own.
The company – the real estate arm of OMERS, Ontario’s municipal employees pension plan – has been a highly active investor in U.S. real estate in the past few years. This spring, it agreed to buy 450 Park Ave. in Manhattan for $575 million, and it is Related Cos.’ partner in its giant Hudson Yards project on Manhattan’s West Side.
Mr. Trickett said the company isn’t yet sated, and ultimately wants to have about $10 billion of U.S. commercial property. At the end of 2013, it reported around $2 billion in U.S. real estate, a number that has risen with the trades in Boston and New York.
For four years, Toronto-based Oxford Properties Group has been yearning to buy office towers in Boston as part of its push into U.S. commercial property.
On Thursday, it finally broke in.
Oxford– in a partnership with the asset management arm of J.P. Morgan Chase JPM -4.24% & Co. – bought four office towers totaling 2.2 million square feet in the city from Blackstone Group LPBX -1.32%, finalizing the deal yesterday. Blackstone, advised by Eastdil Secured, first agreed this spring to sell the four towers plus a fifth – subsequently sold to another buyer – for about $2.1 billion, according to people familiar with the deal.
“Large institutional trades don’t happen often here,” said Andrew Trickett, who heads Oxford’s office portfolio in the U.S. The buildings bought by the Oxford-J.P. Morgan venture are 225 Franklin St., 60 State St. and One Memorial Drive in Cambridge. Oxford bought the fourth, 125 Summer St., on its own.
The company – the real estate arm of OMERS, Ontario’s municipal employees pension plan – has been a highly active investor in U.S. real estate in the past few years. This spring, it agreed to buy 450 Park Ave. in Manhattan for $575 million, and it is Related Cos.’ partner in its giant Hudson Yards project on Manhattan’s West Side.
Mr. Trickett said the company isn’t yet sated, and ultimately wants to have about $10 billion of U.S. commercial property. At the end of 2013, it reported around $2 billion in U.S. real estate, a number that has risen with the trades in Boston and New York.
Pension money
scoops up prized piece of Quebec real estate
the Dix30 retail complex in Brossard
Pension money has scooped up another prized piece of Quebec real estate, but this time it’s not the Caisse de Dépôt et placement du Quebec doing the buying.
Oxford Properties Group, the real-estate arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), announced Thursday it had purchased a 50 per cent stake in Brossard’s Quartier Dix30 from Carbonleo Real Estate Inc., for an undisclosed sum. Henceforth, they’ll manage it jointly.
The 2.3-million-square-foot shopping and entertainment complex on the South Shore is the second-largest shopping centre in Canada, behind West Edmonton Mall, and has been developed in phases at a cost of about $800 million since 2004. It includes 310 stores, 53 restaurants, two live theatres, a cinema, a hotel and 330,000 square feet of office space.
Oxford described it Thursday as “one of Canada’s most dominant and successful retail assets,” to which it brings broad retail experience and relationships with national and global retailers
Pension money has scooped up another prized piece of Quebec real estate, but this time it’s not the Caisse de Dépôt et placement du Quebec doing the buying.
Oxford Properties Group, the real-estate arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), announced Thursday it had purchased a 50 per cent stake in Brossard’s Quartier Dix30 from Carbonleo Real Estate Inc., for an undisclosed sum. Henceforth, they’ll manage it jointly.
The 2.3-million-square-foot shopping and entertainment complex on the South Shore is the second-largest shopping centre in Canada, behind West Edmonton Mall, and has been developed in phases at a cost of about $800 million since 2004. It includes 310 stores, 53 restaurants, two live theatres, a cinema, a hotel and 330,000 square feet of office space.
Oxford described it Thursday as “one of Canada’s most dominant and successful retail assets,” to which it brings broad retail experience and relationships with national and global retailers
BOREALIS INFRASTRUCTURE
Fortum to launch sale of Swedish grid this month -sources
The sources said Borealis Infrastructure, part of the consortium that bought the Finnish grid; Macquarie European Infrastructure Funds ; and Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings (CKI), an investment entity controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, were among those planning to bid. Borealis, the infrastructure investment arm of Canadian pension fund OMERS, has teamed up with Swedish pension funds AP1, AP3 and Folksam to bid, two of the sources said.
That’s my view of what the City and its employees should do. It is no longer a pension fund but rather a pension manager using pension monies to be an entrepreneur. Who do they think they are, Macquarie? Here is what OMERS is turning into. It is not only a manager now but is sinking in huge amounts of money into infrastructure investments:
OMERS VENTURE CAPITAL
The sources said Borealis Infrastructure, part of the consortium that bought the Finnish grid; Macquarie European Infrastructure Funds ; and Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings (CKI), an investment entity controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, were among those planning to bid. Borealis, the infrastructure investment arm of Canadian pension fund OMERS, has teamed up with Swedish pension funds AP1, AP3 and Folksam to bid, two of the sources said.
That’s my view of what the City and its employees should do. It is no longer a pension fund but rather a pension manager using pension monies to be an entrepreneur. Who do they think they are, Macquarie? Here is what OMERS is turning into. It is not only a manager now but is sinking in huge amounts of money into infrastructure investments:
OMERS VENTURE CAPITAL
Canada’s Startup Scene is Thriving
“When the dot com bust occurred in 2001, Canada was hit particularly hard because the venture capital ecosystem in was still at a very embryonic stage,” John Ruffalo, CEO of Toronto-based OMERS Ventures, said. The firm invests in Wattpad, Desire2Learn, Hootsuite, Shopify, and various other Canadian startups. He explained that while the region used to see its startup talent depart for Silicon Valley, leading to “brain drain,” nowadays engineers are “choosing to stay because there are some great companies.”
Information technology has garnered the most venture capital in Canada this year, with $452 million invested in 83 startups in 2014, according to PitchBook data. Consumer products startups have raised $154 million and business products have see $153 million pour in.
In addition to incoming capital, the region has also seen a handful of high-profile exits this past year. Toronto-based Public Mobile was acquired by Telus telecom for $241 million and Montreal-based lighting technology company LumenPulse completed an IPO.
In addition to incoming capital, the region has also seen a handful of high-profile exits this past year. Toronto-based Public Mobile was acquired by Telus telecom for $241 million and Montreal-based lighting technology company LumenPulse completed an IPO.
FUNDRAISING
FUNDRAISING
Venture capital’s new style: hands-on
OMERS Ventures, the venture capitalist arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System pension fund, similarly doesn’t have a problem with fundraising. It gets its money from OMERS. It also has brought in a host of entrepreneurs to guide young companies.
And yet OMERS Ventures still has a more traditional need for business home runs – or as its director of business development, David Crow, put it, “the likelihood of providing the highest probability of achieving the greatest returns for OMERs and pensioners.”
For the OMERS VC arm, this means a general formula that looks for three times the return on invested capital, with some investments naturally performing worse than that, some performing better. Yet even with this traditional approach, having entrepreneurs on staff who specialize in the operations of young companies is seen as a good idea.
“I see it as part of a maturing of the industry,” said Mr. Woollatt of the CVCA. “As in any industry, the wider and thinner it is, it’s usually at an immature stage. And then you get more and more specialized as you grow up.”
OMERS Ventures, the venture capitalist arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System pension fund, similarly doesn’t have a problem with fundraising. It gets its money from OMERS. It also has brought in a host of entrepreneurs to guide young companies.
And yet OMERS Ventures still has a more traditional need for business home runs – or as its director of business development, David Crow, put it, “the likelihood of providing the highest probability of achieving the greatest returns for OMERs and pensioners.”
For the OMERS VC arm, this means a general formula that looks for three times the return on invested capital, with some investments naturally performing worse than that, some performing better. Yet even with this traditional approach, having entrepreneurs on staff who specialize in the operations of young companies is seen as a good idea.
“I see it as part of a maturing of the industry,” said Mr. Woollatt of the CVCA. “As in any industry, the wider and thinner it is, it’s usually at an immature stage. And then you get more and more specialized as you grow up.”
New study shows York Region is a digital leader
In an interview with John Ruffolo, CEO of OMERS Ventures that is included as part of the report, Ruffalo says: "Your data is concerning and supports other research indicating that Canada’s track record in R&D spend trails other nations around the world. We have to reverse this and make sure R&D spend is a key priority. It is a central strategy for viability of our industry and in individual companies."Building success
BuildDirect CEO Jeff Booth helped shake the construction supply business to its foundations.
To finance the company’s growth, BuildDirect raised $16 million in venture capital from OMERS Ventures in 2012 and another $30 million in a Series B round last year led by Mohr Davidow Ventures.
Wattpad's strategy is not exactly an open book
The most popular contributors to the site, founded in 2006, draw adulation from a young audience–nearly 80 per cent of Wattpad’s 34 million users are under 25. The Victorian populist would have basked in that sort of attention, but he also liked to be paid–and none of the site’s contributors currently are. “You can build a huge fan base here,” Lau says. “A platform.”
It’s been a big year so far for the 46-year-old. In March, investors led by OMERS Ventures announced they were pouring $46-million into Wattpad, bringing outside contributions to date to nearly $70-million.
Ranovus bags $24 mln
Ranovus, a provider of multi-terabit interconnect solutions for data center and communications networks, has secured $24 million in financing. Its backers include Azure Capital Partners, T-Venture, BDC Venture Capital, OMERS Ventures and MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund
A new kind of travel site takes off after sudden U-turn
Hopper’s pivot happened in May. The company had been in development for almost seven years, and had attracted about $22-million in funding from the likes of OMERS Ventures (the venture capital arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, one of Canada’s largest pension funds), Brightspark Ventures and Atlas Venture. Money wasn’t the problem. Hopper’s problem was its product.
Hopper aiming for more transparent travel search
Currently, Hopper does not have a revenue stream yet.
The investment was confirmed today by tweets sent from the account of Difference Capital Managing Partner Tom Liston. The undisclosed amount of money was part of a the company’s recent $60-million financing, which is believed to be led by Boston-based Fidelity, described by Hootsuite simply as a “prominent global institutional investor”.
Existing investors OMERS Ventures, Accel Partners and Insight Venture Partners also participated, in addition to Silicon Valley Bank.
Hootsuite Reaches $1 Billion Valuation
in Latest Funding Round
The latest funding was led by a new Boston-based investor that Hootsuite hasn’t revealed, as well as existing investors Insight Venture Partners, Accel Partners and OMERS Ventures. The company has raised a total of $250 million.
Hootsuite recently hit 10 million users — it was at 7 million last August — and has 600 employees, twice the size from a year ago. Hootsuite already has offices in London and Singapore, and the new funding should help it continue to expand internationally. The company plans to open a Latin America office before the year is out, and wants to continue its growth in Asia, Holmes said in an interview.
Partnering with companies of all sizes -- from start-ups to Fortune 500 enterprises -- Marketwired (@Marketwired) is an innovative, social communications company offering best-in-class global news distribution and reporting. Powered by Sysomos, Marketwired's products also provide state-of-the-art social media monitoring and analytics. This critical business intelligence provides instant and unlimited access to all social media conversations, allowing brands to see what's happening, why it's happening, and who's driving the conversations.
Marketwired is majority-owned by OMERS Private Equity (www.omerspe.com) which manages the private equity activities of OMERS Administration Cooperation and today has $6.4B of investments under its management. OMERS Private Equity is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with offices in New York and London.
The single biggest difference
between the Canadian and American tech scenes
But what about the thousands of Canadian techs that aren’t public?
OMERS Ventures Director of Business Development David Crow says there are promising up and coming Canadian techs that are consumer focused, such as BuildDirect, Kik, Frank and Oak, Wattpad and PasswordBox.
“I’m not sure I’d say that Canadian companies are enterprise focused,” says Crow. “There is a strong set of consumer companies. I think consumer companies are harder to get to scale. There are not a lot of companies with the scale or complexity of Kik. Also the amount of cash required to run these companies is huge!”.
Crow says the conservative nature of Canadian business may be shaping many early companies away from a pure consumer focus.
“The hybrid approach is one of value chain,” he says. “Many like Kobo were in a similar part of the value chain. The focus early on most “consumer” platforms is distribution. I suspect we as Canadians like the perceived safety/comfort in known business models which leads us to build businesses that seek monetization earlier in their lifecycle which are bound to be enterprise or SMB focused businesses.”
Sabia is a lawyer and corporate director with a career spanning both the private and public sectors, including senior positions at OMERS, Canadian Pacific Limited and Redpath Industries. In 1986 she founded her own consulting practice, specializing in assisting business with organizational and strategy issues. She was named one of Canada’s 100 Most Powerful Women by the Women’s Executive Network in 2009, and has served on the boards of many organizations ranging from small companies to global conglomerates. A longtime director at Canadian Tire Corporation, Sabia was named chair of the board in 2007. In 2011 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada for her role in supporting the advancement of women in the corporate sector and for strengthening corporate governance. She will receive an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree on Oct. 30 at the ceremony starting at 2 p.m.
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In this BLOG we will look at pensions and their impact on what are called Public Private Partnerships or P3’s. IT will also deal with other pension matters, such as Defined Contribution Plans (DC) vs Defined Benefit (DB) PLANS, the weakness in private plans, the need for pension reform in public pensions to have shareholder rights, directorships and ethical investment directives and policies.
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