Stephen Harper’s name in mix as potential head of AIMCo

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

Two sources accustomed to occasions on the funding supervisor say Harper’s title has been within the combine for at the least 10 months, which coincides with when Mark Wiseman, a seasoned pension government and former CEO of the Canada Pension Plan Funding Board, vacated the chair position on the finish of final yr.

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The hypothesis has grown “louder,” nevertheless, for the reason that authorities jettisoned all 10 administrators and a handful of key executives together with chief government Evan Siddall, based on 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 employees numbers and prices — together with salaries and third-party administration charges — for the shakeup, declaring a “reset” on the arms-length funding supervisor. However sources accustomed to occasions on the Crown company, which manages funds together with pensions, endowments, and the provincial authorities’s Heritage Financial savings Belief Fund, say there had been tensions between the group and the federal government for months over different points. These included AIMCo’s worldwide growth by way of 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 dimensions of the AIMCo-managed Heritage Financial savings Belief Fund, which, based on its web site, “produces earnings to assist authorities packages 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 government council, Ray Gilmour, the province’s high bureaucrat, will function the interim CEO.

Harper actually has bona fides in Alberta. He turned 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 shoppers on market entry and managing world geopolitical and financial threat.

Following his authorities’s defeat in 2015, Harper established a non-public consultancy known as Harper & Associates in partnership along with his former chief of employees Ray Novak.

It isn’t identified 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 non-public sector.

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

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 Imaginative and prescient One Administration Companions, an activist fund that took on U.S. division retailer operator Kohl’s earlier this yr, based on Reuters report in February.

In line with his web site, Harper can be a director of Colliers Worldwide Group Inc., Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. and Get better Inc.

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