OMERS records worst loss since 2008 on bad COVID-19 bets

Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, Toronto, one of Canada's largest pension funds, posted its worst result since the global financial crisis after suffering big losses in its private equity and real estate holdings.

The pension fund, known as OMERS, lost 2.7% on its investments last year, pushing assets to C$105 billion ($84 billion). It's the worst result since 2008, when it lost 15.3%.

"We have been hit very hard by COVID and we're not making excuses, but the fact is most of our difficulties this year were directly related to COVID," Blake Hutcheson, who became chief executive officer on June 1, said in an interview.

The pension fund fell far short of its 6.9% return benchmark, and also trailed the average 20% increase of Canadian pension plans, as estimated by Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

Losses in its consumer-facing investments, including retail properties and transportation and entertainment holdings, explain more than half of the overall performance gap versus the benchmark, Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Simmons said.

OMERS' 20-company private equity portfolio had a negative return of 8.4%, compared with a gain of 4.6% in the previous year. The lion's share of that loss came from two holdings, Mr. Hutcheson said — a movie theater chain and a recruiting company in Europe. Together, they constituted about 90% of the drop.

"These companies have delivered double-digit returns consistently, and all of a sudden there are these COVID-related losses," Mr. Hutcheson said.

OMERS' portfolio of "old economy" listed equities, which includes significant allocations to dividend-paying financial services and energy companies, also weighed on performance, according to Mr. Simmons.

"We had a positive return in our equities this year, but they didn't rise quite as much as some of the new-economy stocks," he said. "Some of our other private investments are very new-economy oriented, but the equity portfolio has been very focused on dividend-producing income stocks."

Looking ahead, the pension fund will focus on increasing allocations to new-economy stocks and expand its investments in the Asia-Pacific region, where demographics and economic growth are attractive.

The pension fund is also making changes to its hedging strategy.

"After a year like this one, the big lesson is it's the balance sheet you have to preserve and protect as opposed to the shorter-term fluctuations," Mr. Hutcheson said. "We took off about 30% of our hedges, and we're going to have a long-term program to get us down to closer to maybe 20% of the portfolio hedged at any given time."