Forget all the handwringing about ETFs, CLOs and Fed policy. Canada’s top pension manager says the huge shift of assets from public to private markets could trigger steeper selloffs and exacerbate a crisis.
Mark Machin, chief executive officer of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, said he’s worried that a growing sum of money is locked up in assets or investment vehicles that can’t be sold easily or quickly.
“If there’s a sudden dislocation in markets, a profound dislocation, people who need the money to pay pensions or to pay other obligations are going to have to sell the public stuff quite rapidly,” Machin, who oversees about C$370 billion ($278 billion), said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Davos, Switzerland. «People who have big chunks of private assets need to think very carefully about what they’re going to do when things dislocate.»
