Ontario Teachers’ CEO Named Chancellor of Queen’s University

Jim Leech will serve a three-year term as the Canadian university’s highest officer following his retirement from the C$129.5 billion fund this December.

(October 21, 2013) — Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan President and CEO Jim Leech has been appointed chancellor of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

Leech announced his retirement from the C$129.5 billion fund in April after serving as its head since 2007. He had joined Ontario Teachers’ 12 years ago to lead its private capital department after working as president and CEO of Unicorp Canada Corporation.

The outgoing CEO will begin his new role on July 1, 2014 for a three-year term.

“Jim Leech is a highly accomplished business leader and an alumnus with a long history of service to the university,” Daniel Woolf, Queen’s principal and vice-chancellor, said in a statement. “Queen’s will benefit immensely from his extensive experience and I personally look forward to working with him over the coming years.”

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The chancellor is Queen’s highest officer, but the university stated, a largely ceremonial position. Leech will preside over convocations, confer degrees, and lead annual meetings of the university council. He will also be a voting member of the university’s board of trustees.

“I am honored by this opportunity and look forward to being even more involved in the life of the Queen’s community, which brings extraordinary people together to do extraordinary things,” Leech said.

Leech will be leaving the pension plan in tiptop shape—the fund’s assets under management have almost doubled since his appointment, aided by 10-year returns of 9.6%.

“Returns earned above our benchmark directly support the goal of pension security and demonstrate the value of our approach to active investing,” Leech said. “The investment team successfully navigated significant risks and turmoil in the global economy again in 2012 to earn an excellent rate of return.”

Ron Mock, Ontario Teachers’ current senior-vice president for fixed income and alternatives, has been tapped to succeed Leech as president and CEO on January 1, 2014.

(October 18, 2013) – Quantitative easing, the trust versus contract debate, EU legislation affecting pension funds, and chancellors of the exchequer were all banished to Room 101 by UK pension funds CEOs at Europe’s largest pensions conference.

Four of the UK’s top pension fund chief executives were asked to nominate issues within the pensions industry that they wanted to banish to Room 101, George Orwell’s torture chamber in the Ministry of Love from his novel 1984.

Chris Hitchen, the CEO of RPMI—the pension services company that runs the UK rail industry’s pension arrangements for 350,000 beneficiaries—was the most successful CEO, getting two of his suggestions voted into the infamous room by delegates at the National Association of Pension Funds conference.

His first suggestion was for all previous chancellors of the exchequer, who had “raided our pension funds” through a variety of taxation introductions, including limiting tax relief on contributions.

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His second winning proposal was to ban quantitative easing, for “damaging pension schemes and pensioners… making annuities poor value”, and for rigging the financial markets to the detriment of defined contribution (DC) funds.

Lesley Alexander, CEO of the UK’s HSBC pension fund, successfully argued for EU legislation affecting UK pension schemes to be banished to Room 101, saying she was “frustrated with the pace of EU legislation, and with its interventional stance”.

Referring to a controversial way of accounting for pension assets and their risk profile being tabled by the European regulator EIOPA earlier this week, Alexander added: “We hate the holistic balance sheet: we thought it had been sent away to rest in peace, but now it’s back.”

Bill Galvin, CEO of the Universities Superannuation Scheme and former CEO of the UK’s pensions regulator, won the right to banish the debate over whether trust-based pension funds were better or worse than contract-based pension funds “because I’m sick of it”.

“It damages the whole industry…and everybody loses a bit of confidence,” he told delegates. “What matters is getting the best components in place and a focus on getting those across. I’ve seen pretty rubbish trust-based schemes and pretty rubbish contract-based schemes, but I’ve also seen really good examples of both. We need to move the dialogue away from the wrapper.”

The only CEO not to win the right to banish his bête noire was Stephen Nichols, CEO of the Pensions Trust, which runs the pension fund money for 2,400 not-for-profit organisations and more than 157,000 members.

Nichols campaigned for the Department for Work and Pensions’ inconsistency, DC risk assessment processes, the complicated auto-enrolment regulations, and active fund managers who make bad excuses for poor performance to be sent to Room 101.