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Comment by mmastrac | Hacker News Reader

Interesting: OMERS Ventures is one of the bigger shareholders in Shopify, to the tune of 6%. They are run as part of massive pension fund in Canada.

And the Canadian Gov't is also part of this round through a few levels of indirection:

http://www.techvibes.com/blog/canadian-tech-sector-poised-fo...

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I know nothing about the investment world, but find this government-driven investment interesting. Last week the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, in participation with Permira, agreed to take Informatica private [0]. Two large tech investments by Canadian pension funds, and likely many more to which I'm unaware. Is this a proactive move to mitigate future pension crises [1], or just the way most governments operate? I suppose I'm not accustomed to thinking of governments investing in this manner.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/business/dealbook/informat...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_crisis

This particular fund might be acting a bit more aggressively than some others, but big pension funds are huge investors. Calpers (the California state pension fund) has over $300 billion in assets, and often acts to try to improve the performance of the companies that they own.

CPPIB and OMERS are at arms-length from the government. They have a free hand to invest in anything that meets their objectives and at least for CPPIB, any implication that the government had meddled in investment decisions for political reasons would be a huge scandal. Until recently, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan owned the Toronto Maple Leafs, one of the most profitable pro sports teams in the world.

In Canada, if it makes money, the pension plans are in on it. It's not political - just business.

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