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NewsmakersDecember 3, 2024

HOOPP Names Annesley Wallace President, CEO

The appointment of Wallace to head the $80 billion Ontario health care pension is effective April 1.

Annesley Wallace

The Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan announced Monday the appointment of Annesley Wallace as president and CEO, effective April 1, 2025.

Wallace will succeed Jeff Wendling, who is retiring after serving as CEO since 2020. Wendling, the fund’s CIO before being appointed CEO, had been at the fund since 1998. He announced his retirement in September.

Wallace will work with Wendling during a transition period starting March 1, 2025, before assuming the role and duties of CEO the next month.

HOOPP manages C$112.6 billion ($80 billion) in assets and serves more than 460,000 health care workers in Ontario across 670 employers.

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Wallace is currently executive vice president of strategy and corporate development and president of power and energy solutions at TC Energy. She is also currently on the board of directors at Deep Sky, a Montreal-based carbon removal company, and holds board positions at the Toronto Region Board of Trade and Bruce Power. She was also director and board member of Infrastructure Ontario and Alectra.

From 2021 to 2023, Wallace was executive vice president and global head of infrastructure at the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System. Wallace held previous titles at OMERS, including chief pension officer, senior vice president, pension services and managing director of infrastructure. At OMERS, Wallace oversaw a C$32 billion infrastructure portfolio.

Given Wallace’s experience in infrastructure, she is likely to spearhead the pension’s growth in the asset class. HOOPP first established an infrastructure team in 2019, increasing its allocation to the asset class to C$5.6 billion at the end of 2023, compared with C$4.7 billion the year before, according to the fund’s 2023 annual report.

“One of the many reasons I am excited about joining HOOPP is that the organization is uniquely positioned for success,” Wallace said in a statement. “HOOPP is a top-performing pension plan, operating as part of a defined benefit system that is admired globally. It has an exceptionally strong purpose and talented people. It also has a very bright future, given its current funded status and scale, mandate in the healthcare sector and opportunities for growth across membership and employer groups.”

Wallace earned a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering and a master of science degree in materials engineering from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and an MBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto.

Sweden’s AP7 Blacklists 2 Oil Producers

The pension fund added MEG Energy from Canada and EOG Resources from the U.S. to its banned ledger of 110 companies.

By Matt Toledo

AP7, the second-largest pension fund in Sweden, announced last week the addition of two companies to its blacklist over concerns that the companies are not in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change because they lack climate transition plans.

EOG Resources Inc., a Houston-based oil and gas exploration company, and MEG Energy Corp., a Canadian oil producer and exploration company, were added to the fund’s blacklist and excluded from its investment universe.

“The companies are blacklisted because they do not act in line with the Paris Agreement due to large-scale oil operations without transition plans,” AP7 stated.

EOG Resources and MEG Energy did not respond to requests for comment.

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AP7 invests in companies “that in an acceptable way adhere to the international norms and conventions signed by Sweden,” the fund stated earlier this year. The fund also follows blacklisting standards set out by the Paris Agreement, standards expanded in 2022 to include companies without climate transition plans and companies involved in large scale coal operations and oil sands extraction.

Including these two additions, AP7 has blacklisted 53 fossil-fuel companies based on these standards, with another 10 excluded based on other criteria. In total, the fund has blacklisted 110 companies, including companies involved in the development and production of nuclear weapons and companies that violate the UN Global Compact’s 10 principles.

The fund removed two companies, Hitachi Zosen Corp. and SGL Carbon S.E., from the blacklist “based on the lack of verified information about ongoing violations by the companies.”

In June, the fund added Saudi Aramco to the blacklist, as well as six other oil producers due to alleged violations of the Paris Agreement. In December 2023, AP7 added two Chinese coal producers to the blacklist, while removing AECOM, Tata Power Co. and Hanwha Corp. from the list.

In a press release, AP7 stated that it uses blacklisting as an engagement tool, along with other tools such as company dialogues and voting at company general meetings.

In total, AP7 manages 1.1 trillion Swedish kroner ($100 billion) in assets. The fund counts more than 5 million Swedes—roughly half the population of Sweden—as members and beneficiaries. Year-to-date, the fund has returned 21.8%, and it has returned 84.6% and 245.8% over the past five and 10 years, respectively.