Unigestion has opened a new office in Toronto to increase its institutional business in Canada.
The Swiss asset manager already has two institutional mandates in the country – the pension plan of the Desjardins group, which awarded a mandate in 2012, and an unnamed institutional client that mandated Unigestion in 2013.
For both institutions, Unigestion is running global equity mandates with a combined value of CAD500m (€330m).
Through its new office in Toronto, it will also be offering its other products, including “risk-managed equities, private assets, alternative investments and cross asset solutions”, a spokesman confirmed to IPE.
Heather Cooke has been named director institutional clients for the new office.
She joins from Mercer Canada, where, since 2010, she was partner and leader of Implemented Consulting and Dynamic De-Risking.
The Swiss asset manager said its services were “ideally suited” to the institutional investor segment in Canada, where pension funds, endowments and foundations are keen to diversify their manager pool and are open to new solutions.
Unigestion said the Canadian pension fund market had been growing every year for the last 10 years, and that the company aimed to “go where the clients are”.
“The opening of the Toronto office is a major development in the expansion of Unigestion’s footprint beyond its traditional European markets,” the Swiss asset manager said.
In total, Unigestion has €10.9bn in assets under management, with more than half in segregated mandates.
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