Twice a week the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (cppib), which manages pensions for 20m of Canada’s citizens, holds meetings to approve or reject investments above C$500m ($375m). Agenda items are plentiful. Since 2017 the board has sanctioned investments in, among other things, toll roads in Mexico and Australia; rental housing in China; shale assets in Ohio; solar and wind assets in India and America; and big chunks of Endeavor, a Beverly Hills talent agency, and Ant Financial, a Chinese financial giant.
加拿大养老金计划投资公司（以下简称CPPIB）管理着2000 万加拿大公民的养老金，每周举行两次会议，审批5 亿加元（3.75 亿美元）以上的投资。待审项目类型多种多样。2017 年以来，公司批准投资的项目包括墨西哥和澳大利亚的收费公路、中国的出租公寓、俄亥俄州的页岩项目、印度和美国的太阳能和风能项目，以及比弗利山（Beverly Hills）的经纪公司Endeavor 和中国金融巨头蚂蚁金服的大笔股份。
The Canada Pension Plan (cpp) is a state-run earnings-related pensions scheme, but its investment board is run as an independent entity. The fund’s portfolio size has more than tripled over the past decade, and is going to become only more gigantic. At the end of last year its portfolio was C$454bn. Investment income, plus an expansion in the scope of the plan this month, which raises contributions in return for higher payouts, means assets may expand at a healthy rate for decades. The cpp receives contributions equivalent to 9.9% of most Canadians’ pay (the province of Quebec has its own system), and that share is set to reach 11.9% by 2023. The fund is a particularly mammoth example of a type of state investor that is wielding increasing influence worldwide.
加拿大养老金计划（CPP）是一个国营的收入关联养老金计划，但其投资委员会是一个独立运营的实体。该基金的投资组合规模在过去十年中增长了两倍以上，而且只会继续扩大。截至去年年底，其投资组合规模为4540 亿加元。CPP 上月提高了缴费率及给付水平，基金规模扩大加上投资收入意味着其资产可能会以健康的速度扩张数十年。CPP 的缴费率为大多数加拿大人工资的9.9%（魁北克省有自己的养老金体系），到2023 年这一比例将达到11.9%。有一类国有投资机构在全世界的影响力与日俱增，CPP 是一个规模尤其庞大的例子。
When the cpp was founded in 1965, it had a familiar defect: a mismatch between the benefits promised and the contributions required. By the mid-1990s money was running out. Russia, France and Argentina all faced protests when they tried to stabilise pension funds by squeezing payouts. America’s national pension plan, Social Security, is expected to run out of money by 2034, and the public-sector pensions managed by many states, notably Illinois and New Jersey, face dire shortfalls.
CPP 在1965 年成立之时存在一个常见的缺陷：承诺的福利与所需缴费不匹配。到上世纪90 年代中期，它的资金已快见底。俄罗斯、法国和阿根廷曾试图通过减少养老金发放来稳定养老基金，引发了抗议。预计美国的国家养老金计划社会保障计划（Social Security）到2034 年将出现资金枯竭，许多州管理的公共部门养老金（尤其是伊利诺伊州和新泽西州）也面临严重的资金不足。
The cpp, by contrast, was overhauled, with contributions raised and its assets separated from the public pot. The investment board was set up in 1997, with a mandate to focus on returns to the exclusion of public policy and a strict transparency requirement. An exemption from public-sector pay caps enables it to hire people from the private sector. Its chief executive, Mark Machin, left Goldman Sachs in 2012 to run the fund’s operations in Asia, before he was promoted in 2016.
相比之下，CPP 做了大幅调整，提高了缴费率，并把自有资产与公共资金进行了分隔。CPPIB 成立于1997 年，其任务是关注投资回报，不受公共政策制约，以及满足严格的透明度要求。由于不受公共部门薪资上限的限制，它可以从私营部门雇用人才。其首席执行官马克·马辛（Mark Machin）于2012 年离开高盛前来负责CPPIB 的亚洲业务，于2016 年获晋升。
What was once a single office in Toronto is now a head office with branches in Hong Kong, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, New York, São Paulo and Sydney. Five departments oversee 25 investment approaches. These include the usual public markets along with direct investments in property, natural resources and infrastructure as well as niche markets such as royalties tied to technology. Outside “partnerships”—with firms through which it invests—have risen from 62 to 254.
CPP 过去只在多伦多办公，如今除了在多伦多的总部，还在香港、伦敦、卢森堡、孟买、纽约、圣保罗和悉尼设有办事处。它有五个部门，负责管理 25 类投资方式。其中包括一般的公开市场投资、对房地产、自然资源和基础设施的直接投资，以及技术使用费等利基市场。它借以开展投资的外部“合作伙伴”已经从 62 个增加到254 个。
Wall Street denizens reckon that its involvement in private equity, which accounts for a fifth of its overall portfolio, places it in the same league as gic, the entity that manages Singapore’s foreign-exchange reserves. Both have the capability to assess even the most complex potential investments speedily and respond with large amounts of long-term capital. The cppib has 195 seats on the boards of 77 companies. It plans to allocate up to a third of its portfolio to emerging markets eventually. That would make it one of the most important sources of private capital to many of the world’s fast-growing projects.
CPP 的私募股权投资占其整体投资组合的五分之一。华尔街人士认为，CPP 对私募股权投资的参与让它成为了和管理新加坡外汇储备的新加坡政府投资公司（GIC）一个量级的投资机构。两者都有能力快速评估最复杂的潜在投资项目，并运用大量的长期投资资本。CPPIB 在77 家公司的董事会中拥有 195 个席位。它计划最终将高达三分之一的投资组合分配到新兴市场。这将使其成为世界上许多快速发展的项目最重要的私人资本来源之一。
Its risk-management approach means evaluating securities according to factors including geography, debt and equity characteristics, climate risk and gender balance in employment. In pursuit of long-term returns, it is willing to ride out market volatility. In 2018 it expected to have a loss of at least 12.5% at least once a decade. Its actuaries put the annual return needed over the next 75 years to fulfil its obligations at 3.9% above inflation, which it has achieved so far. In order to assess its track record it uses a market benchmark comprised of 85% equity and 15% debt. On average its annual returns have beaten the benchmark over the past ten years, though only modestly.
CPPIB 的风险管理方法根据地理、债务水平和股权特征、气候风险以及就业中的性别平衡等因素评估证券。为追求长期回报，它愿意经受市场波动。2018 年，CPPIB 预计每十年起码会经受一次至少 12.5%的损失。其精算师将未来 75 年为履行义务而需达到的年度回报率定在扣除通胀因素后 3.9%。目前为止，它都实现了这个目标。为了评估自己的业绩，它使用了一个由 85%的股权和 15%的债务组成的市场基准。平均而言，它的年回报率在过去十年中都超过了该基准，尽管超出不多。
Inevitably, new risks will emerge. Valuations based on unrealised private-equity positions could be flawed. By taking positions on so many boards the cppib is assuming managerial responsibilities for multiple companies; it increasingly resembles a sprawling conglomerate, with the associated organisational challenges. Added to this is the oddity that the entity with a powerful role in private firms itself has state links. Though it is formally separate from Canada’s government, it may still be drawn into geopolitical disputes over, say, tariffs and sanctions. And its size, though beneficial in many respects, makes it harder to trade and manage.
新风险将不可避免地显现。基于未兑现的私募股权头寸的估值可能存在缺陷。CPPIB 在众多公司的董事会有席位，相应地也在多家公司承担了管理职责；它越来越像一个触角众多的庞大的企业集团，也就面临着由此而来的组织挑战。除此之外，这个在很多私营企业中扮演重要角色的实体本身又有政府背景，这也很古怪。虽然它与加拿大政府没有正式关联，但仍可能被卷入涉及关税和制裁等地缘政治争端中。它规模庞大，虽说很多时候大有大的好处，但也让交易和管理变得更加困难。
Other similar entities have emerged as big players in recent years. A handful, such as the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System and Quebec’s Caisse de Dépôt et Placement, are also Canadian. Whereas Quebec’s scheme, for instance, dabbles in local economic development, the cppib stands out for its professed independence. Its performance matters beyond Canada not just because of its holdings of global assets, but because many other countries, with their ageing populations and poorly funded pension schemes, might hope to draw lessons from it.
其他类似的实体近年来也已成为金融市场上的重要参与者。其中如安大略省教师退休金计划（Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan）、安大略省市政雇员退休体系（Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System）和魁北克储蓄投资基金（Caisse de Dépôt et Placement）也都是加拿大的机构。魁北克储蓄投资基金涉足地方经济发展，而 CPPIB 则因其自称的独立性而独树一帜。它的业绩影响超出加拿大之外，这不仅是因为它在全球拥有资产，还因为许多有老龄化和养老金不足问题的国家可能希望借鉴它的经验。