Alberta Investment Management Corp. and CEO part ways

The head of Alberta’s $119-billion government-owned investment fund manager is leaving his post a few months earlier than planned after his track record came under fire earlier this year.

CEO Kevin Uebelein is parting ways with the Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo). After more than six years with the investment manager. Uebelin will leave on June 30, 2021.

“This decision is Kevin’s,” AIMCo communications director Dénes Németh told Global News in an email.

“His natural term-ending date is in the not-too-distant future, and accordingly he believes that the board should begin the search for his successor now.”

AIMCo invests for 31 clients, including Alberta’s public pensions and endowment and government funds in Alberta — such as the Alberta heritage fund, a rainy-day account financed by oil and gas royalties.

It is intended to be run at arms-length from the government.

Németh said Uebelein has the “full support of the board and management” as he continues to lead AIMCo until June.

The new CEO has not yet been named.

The board created a recruitment committee and the search for a new CEO is starting immediately, Németh said, with a goal of having one in place no later than June 30.

“AIMCo’s assets under management grew from $84 billion when Kevin started at AIMCo in 2015 to $119 billion at the end of 2019,” Németh said.

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Earlier this spring, AIMCo faced scrutiny following an analysis of investments in smaller energy companies at a time when the sector is struggling.

The left-wing think tank Progress Alberta found that AIMCo invested $1.1 billion from public service pensions in junior and intermediate oil and gas firms since 2016.

Most of those companies lost value well before the COVID-19 crisis, and the oil supply war that has driven the commodity’s price to record lows. At least one company has gone bankrupt despite the injection of tens of millions of pension dollars.

“The vast majority of them were in really rough shape before the crisis,” said Duncan Kinney, one of the authors of the report.

— With files from Bob Weber, The Canadian Press