Harry Marmer Hosts CFA Society Ottawa Presentation by Philip Cross

Date: May 18, 2016
Place: Rideau Club, 99 Bank Street, 15th Floor, Ottawa, ON

Putting Investors First – Comparing the Costs of Public Pension Plans in Ontario

As part of the CFA Institute’s global Putting Investors First Initiative, the CFA Society Ottawa hosted a luncheon on May 18th featuring Philip Cross. The goal of the Putting Investors First Initiative is to build awareness of the duty to protect investor interests at all times, and to ensure that all investment professionals understand their primary role is to serve and protect investors.

Proponents of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and those who argue for its expansion often claim it has low costs and economies of scale, whereby the ratio of costs to assets declines as the value of assets under management grows. Mr. Cross presented findings from a paper he co-authored, which examined the total costs (investment and adminis­trative) of the CPP with five other large public pension plans based in Ontario including the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP), the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement Sys­tem (OMERS), the Healthcare of Ontario Pen­sion Plan (HOOPP), the Ontario Pension Board (OPB), and the OPTrust.

Mr. Cross was introduced by Harry Marmer, Executive Vice President and Partner of Hillsdale Investment Management. Mr. Marmer is a past President of CFA Society Toronto and current volunteer for the CFA Institute, and has worked with the CFA Society Ottawa to organize this luncheon.

Speaker:

Philip Cross worked for 36 years at Statistics Canada, the last few as its Chief Economic Analyst. He wrote Statistics Canada’s monthly assess­ment of the economy for years, as well as many feature articles for the Canadian Economic Observer. After leaving Statistics Canada, he has worked as a contract researcher for a variety of organizations. He has been widely quoted over the years, and now writes a bi-weekly column for the National Post and other papers.