Bay Street talent boosts AIMCo ranks

MONTREAL -- Alberta Investment Management Corp. chief executive officer Leo de Bever has plucked a couple of Bay Street's top investing names to join the province's new public fund manager, as he attempts to build the $70-billion Crown corporation into a global investment leader.

Mr. de Bever, a former senior vice-president with Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, has recruited two former colleagues, George Engman and Brian Gibson, to join AIMCo as senior vice-presidents of direct private equity and equities, respectively. In addition, Warren Cabral, a past chief financial officer of a number of Alberta companies, has become CFO of the Edmonton-based asset manager. Bennett Jones partner Carole Hunt will become chief legal officer in 2009.

"I need depth, I need experience, and I need people with a track record of being able to take opportunities and realize them," Mr. de Bever said yesterday in an interview, adding he plans to announce further hires in the coming weeks.

"Leo was given a mandate to build a top-class investment management organization and this is evidence he is executing on his mandate," said Keith Ambachtsheer, director of the Rotman International Centre for Pension Management at the University of Toronto.

Mr. Engman is a pioneer of private equity investing in Canada. He founded and ran the private equities portfolio for the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System from 1980 to 1986, and did likewise at Teachers from 1991 to 1996, laying the groundwork for the fund to become Canada's leading buyout investor. He now heads Toronto-based Integrated Asset Management Corp.'s private equity group.

"AIMCo is not a startup, but it's a new beginning," said Mr. Engman, who will set up a small office for AIMCo in Toronto but oversee a largely Edmonton-based staff. "Toronto is a logical place to conduct direct deals because a lot of the deal flow is here."

For his part, Mr. Gibson increased the size of his portfolio to $33-billion from $5-billion during eight years as head of equities at Teachers. In the process, Mr. Gibson, who is moving to Edmonton and starts his job next week, championed relationship investing, by which Teachers would buy prominent stakes in public companies such as WestJet Airlines Ltd. and Nexen Inc., and help shape their strategies. He left Teachers this year to co-found Panoply Capital Asset Management, but the firm had difficulty amid volatile markets raising a targeted $1-billion from investors.

"The government really wants AIMCo to be a world leader and that really intrigues me," said Mr. Gibson, 52, who will oversee an equity portfolio worth between $20-billion and $25-billion. "When you think, 'Where can you go in Canada to build a world-leading investment firm?' there's nowhere else."

AIMCo was established on Jan. 1 to invest various Alberta government capital pools - including its $15.8-billion Heritage Savings Trust Fund, fed by resource revenues - and six public sector pension funds. The money was previously managed by the Alberta Treasury, but the government finally took the advice of outsiders, including Mr. de Bever, and set up AIMCo as an arm's-length investment organization with its own independent board, chaired by former Toronto-Dominion Bank CEO Charles Baillie.

The board then hired Mr. de Bever, who spent 10 years through 2004 as Teachers' senior vice-president of research and economics, and helped establish its risk-management policies.

Mr. de Bever joined AIMCo in late summer after spending two years as chief investment officer of Australian public pension plan Victorican Funds Management Corp. and two years as executive vice-president of Manulife Financial.

The Dutch-born Mr. de Bever is charged with transforming AIMCo into a professional asset manager. But he likened the changes under way, including a planned move in 2010 from government offices to a new downtown Edmonton building, to "putting a roof on a house in the middle of a hurricane" given the state of capital markets.

In a recent interview, Alberta Finance Minister Iris Evans said she was "very satisfied" with Mr. de Bever's progress, despite the economic turmoil.