Here's how AIMCo's performance stacked up before last week's ‘shocking’ purge

financialpost.com:

The Alberta government fired the chief executive and entire board of directors of Alberta Investment Management Co. (AIMCo) last week, citing rising costs without an equivalent increase in returns at the $160 billion investment manager. But were AIMCo’s results and costs out of line with other major Canadian investment managers? The Financial Post’s Naimul Karim explores the question.

AIMCo reports both its overall results and those of its balanced fund. The total fund reflects the aggregate of all client accounts, including those who exclusively choose fixed-income and money market investments to achieve their objectives. The balanced fund, meanwhile, only includes client accounts that invest across a range of asset categories, requiring AIMCo to seek higher returns.

In 2023, AIMCo delivered an investment return of eight per cent or $8.9 billion on the balanced fund. While this was lower than its benchmark of 9.3 per cent, the fund’s former chief executive Evan Siddall — who was among those purged last week — described the performance as a “notable accomplishment” in AIMCo’s annual report, considering the “non-stop geopolitical crises,” high inflation and interest rates uncertainty. AIMCo’s total fund reported a return of 6.9 per cent for 2023, which also came up short of the benchmark of 8.7 per cent.

The longer-term performance of AIMCo’s balanced fund has been better relative to its benchmarks: Its 10-year return of 7.3 per cent has outperformed the 6.9 per cent benchmark while the five-year net return of 6.6 per cent also topped the benchmark of 6.5 per cent.

In the first half of 2024, the balanced fund has so far returned 5.6 per cent and the total fund 5.4 per cent

On an absolute basis, AIMCo’s five- and ten-year