IMCO reconsiders US exposure as geopolitical landscape shifts

The C$86 billion ($62 billion) Investment Management Company of Ontario (IMCO) is re-considering its portfolio’s US exposure as the Trump administration’s trade war and ballooning US debt and deficits threaten the US market’s long-term outperformance.

The fund’s record annual return of 9.9 per cent was driven by surging equity markets last year despite an underweight position in the Magnificent Seven. However, CIO Rossitsa Stoyanova says the fund is now carefully deliberating its geographical weights, given question marks around the role of the US in capital markets.

The 9 July deadline that the US set for completing trade talks is rapidly approaching, but the Trump administration has only secured two trade frameworks – with the UK and China – with a dozen more to be completed in the next 10 days.

IMCO is heavily invested in North America with 52 per cent of its investments across all asset classes in the US and 29 per cent in its homeland of Canada. Its US exposure is more dominant in its equity portfolio, accounting for 60 per cent of the exposure, followed by the Asia-Pacific (16 per cent), Europe (12 per cent), and Canada (9 per cent).

“We were pretty comfortable to have a pretty big concentration to the US, and it worked great until February,” Stoyanova tells in an interview with Top1000funds.com. “Now we are considering whether we should have a US target… which we don’t. We need to figure out how comfortable we are to be exposed to the US.”

Equities (which make up 23.2 per cent of the fund’s assets) returned 24.2 per cent for the year against the 27 per cent benchmark, with an underweight position against the Magnificent 7 one factor that dampened returns, although IMCO then employed a portfolio completion overlay strategy to bring its Magnificent 7 portfolio exposure closer to the benchmark.

“The portfolio was very resilient during April – a lot of the things that we set up for the portfolio worked: we had enough liquidity so we didn’t have to sell. We have a rebalancing methodology which is very systematic. So some of the systems and processes that we put in place worked as intended.

“What I’m certain of today is that we should have a US exposure target, which we don’t. We need to figure out how comfortable we are to be exposed to the US.”

Similarly, Stoyanova and her team are assessing their approach to currency. The appreciation of the US dollar against the Canadian dollar contributed to the 2024 returns. Now, the fund’s exposure to the US dollar and US treasuries is attracting more scrutiny, given they may no longer offer the same diversification benefit in a downturn.

“Our expectation today for the long term is that the US dollar will depreciate from where it is today, and this is a long-term trend. So we’re considering how much we have in US dollars, and also what other assets could be used as a diversifier and as s safety in a downturn or in that crisis.”

Central to the fund’s activities is its regular thematic analysis of global markets – the IMCO World View. It pinpointed 12 themes which inform its long-term investment strategy, including accelerating deglobalisation and addressing inequality trends, as well as decelerating climate change and sustainability.

“The trends have materialised – what we didn’t expect is this massive acceleration of the trends,” Stoyanova says.

A growing focus on private markets and internalisation

Private markets are central to IMCO’s strategy to weather this environment of potentially higher volatility and inflation, given its long investment horizon and tolerance for illiquidity and complexity.

IMCO’s exposure to global credit, infrastructure, and private credit has tripled in the past five years with private assets now almost half of the total portfolio.

“Private markets will remain a focus for the fund. We think they bring diversification that we cannot get in the public markets.”

While the absolute performance of IMCO’s private market portfolio was strong in 2024, its net value-add was 244 basis points below its benchmark, largely given the outperformance of public markets in comparison. However, it expects those valuations to converge over the long term.

The organisation also now runs about half of its private market portfolio internally to save on fees and invest in assets that align with its worldview. Its mid size means it co-invests alongside its managers and now has an expedited process to approve smaller investments under C$50 million.

“We are very clear on what kind of co-investments we like to do. We’re nimble and we are reliable, and they appreciate that, which means that they know exactly what we’re looking for. So when they offer it to us, we’ll either quickly say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and if we say ‘yes’, we’re going to be there in the time frame that they need and that’s important.”

IMCO will co-invest alongside its partners but does not have the scale of other Maple 8 funds to take full ownership of assets. It recently identified a need for more exposure to infrastructure utilities but deal flow is lumpy and requires larger investments than it typically makes (IMCO does own 10 per cent of Australian energy transmission network AusNet).

IMCO has instead taken a novel way to meet that goal through publicly-listed proxies.

“We do a program with our public equity factor team that invests in public US utilities. It’s a diversified basket of stocks that sits in infrastructure, and it fills that need that they identified in the portfolio for utilities. We might do more of that in privates.”

Similarly, IMCO’s private equity and credit teams work closely together given they’re investing in the same kind of companies, just across different areas of the capital structure.

“I think it’s going to become more important because the public and private worlds are coming closer and closer together. So these artificial definitions might make less sense in the future.”

Strengthening advisory role, a more nimble approach

IMCO has faced more than its share of challenges since it was created in mid-2017 to manage the assets of local public sector bodies.

“We had Covid,” says Stoyanova. “We had the first war in Europe. We had inflation for the first time in a long time – and Liberation Day.”

They not only created a challenge to performance, but also made it difficult to build internal investment teams during such volatility. Yet the fund has taken those setbacks in its stride to build a strong foundation and culture.

“With that volatility, our portfolio and strategies have done really well – 2024 was our best year of performance,” Stoyanova says from the fund’s offices in Toronto.

“We’re big enough at C$86 billion ($62 billion) to help our clients and do interesting things that are not just investing in an index, but we’re also small enough that we all sit in one room. It’s a big room, but we still fit in one place.”

IMCO last year added four new public sector clients, joining long-term clients such as the $C31.7 billion Ontario Pension Board – a defined benefit plan for Government of Ontario employees – and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, an insurer which helps Ontario people get back to work after a work-related injury or illness.

The majority of its clients are now also taking IMCO’s strategic asset allocation advice, shifting from overweight allocations to underperforming assets such as real estate to newer asset classes like global credit and private equity.

Stoyanova says it is now talking to clients about taking a more responsive asset allocation approach given the increasing pace of change across markets.

“We don’t market time, but we’re market aware, which means that we have a worldview that we think gives us an idea of what the world and the markets will look like for a medium time period, say three to five years – and guides our investing.

“One of our objectives is to – together with our clients – come up with a methodology where we can adjust the asset allocation more to respond to market conditions without going through an elaborate process every three years by doing the asset-liability study with them.”