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OMERS CEO Blake Hutcheson speaks at the 2025 US-Canada Summit in Toronto. ‘We believe in the market, we believe in these assets and we believe in the strategic positioning of owning pieces of the companies that are part of our success in other ways,’ Mr. Hutcheson says.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System earned a 4.8-per-cent return and bought an additional $1-billion in Canadian stocks in the first half of the year as the pension fund looks to add to its domestic investments.
OMERS reported positive returns from each of its asset classes up to June 30, with publicly traded equities yielding the strongest gains at 12.2 per cent.
The Toronto-based fund chose to “shore up” its position as a shareholder in a number of prominent Canadian companies that included banks, insurers and other “counterparties” with which OMERS does business, chief executive officer Blake Hutcheson said in an interview.
“We believe in the market, we believe in these assets and we believe in the strategic positioning of owning pieces of the companies that are part of our success in other ways,” he said.
More broadly, “we believe in the direction of travel for Canada,” he added.
Mr. Hutcheson told The Globe in April that OMERS plans to add $10-billion in new investments in Canada to its portfolio over the next five years. Major domestic pension funds have been under pressure from political and business leaders to invest more at home.
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Aside from stocks, “the pipeline for real estate and infrastructure, particularly, is extremely deep,” he said.
OMERS had about 25 per cent of its assets invested in Canada at the end of June, before the July sale of the plan’s $870-million stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Raptors.
The plan had 52 per cent of its assets invested in the United States, 15 per cent in Europe and 8 per cent in Asia and the rest of the world.
OMERS invests on behalf of about 665,000 Ontario public-service workers, including nurses, firefighters and police officers.
Over 10 years, the plan has earned an average annual return of 7.2 per cent, adding more than $78-billion to its portfolio.
Its assets increased to $151.6-billion as of June 30, up from $145.2-billion at the end of 2025.
The first quarter of the year was “not so easy” for investors, Mr. Hutcheson said, but in the second quarter “things picked up.” Trade tensions and disruptions to energy markets from the war in Iran have continued to create pressure that could drive interest rates and inflation higher, adding to volatility in markets.
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OMERS reported solid returns of 7.8 per cent from private credit, 5.5 per cent from real estate and 5.1 per cent from infrastructure investments in the first half of the year.
Gains from currency exchange rates added 1.4 percentage points to the overall first-half investment gain for OMERS.
Private equity continued to lag, earning 1.1 per cent, as buyers and sellers struggle to see eye to eye on the prices for companies and the cost of debt remains high.
“It’s still in a difficult phase,” Mr. Hutcheson said.
Private equity owners have to put more energy into the grunt work of improving companies’ performance and getting “back to basics,” chief financial officer Jonathan Simmons said in an interview.
But he said OMERS has time on its side, because it doesn’t have a deadline to return money to fund investors as some private equity rivals do.
“We’re not making rash decisions and we’re grinding it out one day at a time,” he said.