La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) released its financial results Feb. 20, 2020. The institutional fund manager which manages funds primarily for public and parapublic insurance plans in Quebec, reported an weighted average return on its depositors’ funds was 10.4 per cent in 2019, compared to 4.2 per cent reported in 2018.
As of Dec. 31, 2019, the CDPQ’s total net assets reached $340.1-billion, up from $309.5 billion reported in 2018.
“We expect the next decade to be more challenging than the past one, during which all investors benefited from the longest bull market in history,” says CDPQ’s president and chief executive officer, Charles Emond. “In the context of a growing gap between real economic performance and market performance, and multiple indicators prompting us to be cautious, it will be important for our strategy to continue evolving.”
For the one-year period ending Dec. 31, 2019, CDPQ’s return of 10.4 per cent is 1.6 per cent below its benchmark, largely thanks to the firm’s real estate and infrastructure portfolios “whose assets are, by definition, oriented towards the long term.” Over five years, the CDPQ’s return reached 8.1 per cent, beating benchmark returns of 7.2 per cent.
