Ivanhoe Cambridge president and chief executive officer Nathalie Palladitcheff will be leaving after the transition
Canada’s second-largest pension fund is moving its real estate investment divisions in-house with the transition expected to save Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec C$100 million ($74.3 million) annually.
CDPQ said on Thursday that it will shift its Ivanhoe Cambridge real estate investment division, along with its Otera Capital real estate lending unit, to its direct control in a process commencing on 29 January in an effort to boost efficiency.
“This integration stems from a vision of an integrated CDPQ that maximizes its impact and performance to offer our depositors the best service for the most efficient cost,” CDPQ president and chief executive officer Charles Emond said in a statement. “It allows us to further leverage our subsidiaries’ deep real estate expertise and the best talent in corporate services from all three organizations to execute our strategy and position CDPQ well for the future.”
In the same announcement, CDPQ said that Ivanhoe Cambridge president and chief executive officer Nathalie Palladitcheff has decided to leave her position after eight years with the organisation. The transition at CDPQ comes just over half of a year after Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, Canada’s third-largest pension manager, announced that it was moving its Cadillac Fairview division in-house.
Team Evolution
“We want to work as one team – one CDPQ – and build on the unique know-how of our talent to create value for our depositors,” Emond added, while Palladitcheff explained the repositioning of the organisation’s real estate divisions as part of the maturation of the teams in their financial roles.
CDPQ president and chief executive officer Charles Emond
“In recent years, Ivanhoé Cambridge has gradually transformed from the dual role of operating properties and making investments into an organization focused on its primary vocation – investing,” Palladitcheff said. “Combining our abilities with those of the CDPQ group is the logical next step of this evolution, which will allow us to focus on what we do best – investing in real estate around the world.”
Following the transition, which is expected to take 18 to 24 months, both Ivanhoe Cambridge and Otera Capital will continue to operate under their existing brand names with the investment teams for both organisations to become part of CDPQ from 29 April.
The corporate service teams managing finance, operations and other back office functions at both Ivanhoe Cambridge and Otera will begin reporting through CDPQ from 29 January.
As part of the arrangement, CDPQ, which ranked behind CPPIB among Canadian pension investors with C$424 billion in assets under management as of 30 June according to its website, is acquiring all minority interests in Ivanhoe Cambridge and Otera and will be the sole shareholder in both organisations following the transition. Details of the financial transactions involved were not provided.
Leadership Transition
Palladitcheff indicated that the restructuring announced this month is part of a transition which her team commenced four years ago, and that with the process entering its final stages the veteran executive expects to depart when the integration process is finished.
“My transformation mandate will conclude at the end of the transition period in which I will be fully engaged,” Palladitcheff said. She added that, “On this journey we have taken together, we have always kept our depositors first in mind, because Ivanhoé Cambridge is an integral part of CDPQ.”
Earlier this month Switzerland’s Partners Group announced that it had hired Karim Habra, Ivanhoe Cambridge’s current head of Europe and co-head of Asia Pacific as its global co-head of real estate, with Habra leaving the Quebec institution after more than five years to take on his new role in March.
Ivanhoe Cambridge managed C$77 billion in real estate assets at of 31 December 2022, with Otera looking after C$28.9 billion at the same juncture.
Earlier this month an announcement by Ivanhoe revealed that the firm has agreed, together with longtime partner Logos, to invest INR 11 billion ($130 million) to expand an industrial park in India’s Maharashtra state.
Just under a year ago the Quebec institution teamed up with Singapore’s Mapletree Investments in a $1.9 India office park venture.
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