Investment and Retirement

Change of name and manager for the SSQ OAM Treasury GIF

Change of name and manager for the SSQ OAM Treasury GIF

As of February 19, 2018, SSQ OAM Treasury GIF will be managed by Fiera Capital and will change name to SSQ Fiera Capital Short-Term Bond GIF. The purpose of this name change is to better clarify the strategy of this fund.

 

Why this change of fund manager?

The fund manager change stems from the recent departure of three seasoned investment professionals of Optimum’s portfolio management team. In July 2017, Charles Lefebvre, Chief Investment Officer, Luc Bergeron, Vice President, Fixed Income and Tan Vu Nguyen, Vice- President, Quantitative Fixed Income and Alternative Investments all left Optimum to join Fiera Capital.

In our opinion, their departure was detrimental to the SSQ OAM Treasury GIF investment management team. In addition to closely monitoring the portfolio and transactions made by Optimum Asset Management (OAM) every week, the fund development team began looking last September for a replacement fund manager. We looked at all short-term Canadian bond managers and interviewed the five best applicants. At the finalist presentation, the members of the Fund Offer Committee (FOC) met with three portfolio managers selected during the selection process.

 

Our analysis...

After an in-depth analysis, the FOC decided to stay with the team that had left OAM for Fiera Capital. Prior to leaving OAM, that team had an overall A rating. In fact, the ratings for each of the five criteria for determining a manager’s long-term success were all A, including the best returns as well as Sharpe and Information ratios, when compared to their peers over the last 3 and 5 years! The team, which is called Active and Strategic Fixed Income (ASFI) team, will be able to rely on the talent of two portfolio managers and two analysts. Furthermore, Fiera Capital, which manages more than 128 billion dollars, is one of our most important business partners, and the Active and Strategic Fixed Income team will be able to count on their support.

In fact, the scope of resources made available by Fiera Capital to their new team is a testament to the support offered by this firm. The investment management style consists in creating value regardless of market performance, specifically with respect to using several asset classes, selected based on fundamentals, technical factors, economic cycle phase and investor sentiment. Before leaving OAM, the team monitored over 500 indicators. Since they could not bring these indicators with them, Fiera Capital provided them with three computer programmers to work on rebuilding the indicators as quickly as possible. By late November, 90% of the indicators had been rebuilt. The team is now fully operational and has reached its cruising speed.

Although this change will take effect on February 19, 2018, the modifications to our documents and website will be done gradually over the next few months. Clients will be informed upon receiving their investment statement in July.