Total Portfolio Management

The Total Portfolio Management team applies a holistic view across the OMERS total portfolio to optimize and evolve the investing strategy through portfolio construction, liquidity and currency management, and economic research.

Focus areas include:

• Leveraging a total portfolio lens and activities to help grow assets in as stable a way as possible while managing volatility and providing a robust and flexible balance sheet.
  

• Taking a long-term view to help OMERS world-class investment teams invest in high-quality assets, diversified around the world, to meet the pension promise.

Meet our Team

Anca Drexler is Executive Vice-President and Head of Total Portfolio Management at OMERS and leads a team focused on portfolio construction, economic research , liquidity and currency management for OMERS total investing portfolio.

Having joined the organization in 2017, Anca was previously Managing Director, Risk Management for OMERS Capital Markets, leading risk activities in support of the firm’s capital markets investments.

Anca has over 25 years of experience in the financial industry. Before joining OMERS she was an investment advisor to the Asset-Liability Management Committee of the Health Care of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) Board of Trustees and an executive in residence with the Global Risk Institute in Financial Services. (GRI). Anca spent 15 years at OPTrust, a large public sector defined benefit pension plan, in a number of leadership roles, including Chief Risk Officer.

An alumna of the Harvard Business School, Anca also holds a MMath from the University of Waterloo and a B.Sc. from the University of Toronto. She is a CFA charter holder.

Anca is actively committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace, as a member of the OMERS Inclusion and Diversity Council initiatives and through mentorship within Women in Capital Markets.

She is a member of the board of Directors of the Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada and sits on their Investment Committee.

Robert Lavigne is a key member of OMERS Total Portfolio Management leadership team, advising investment teams and OMERS more broadly on a wide variety of economic and financial issues, including the macroeconomic outlook, country assessments and longer-term economic trends.

Before joining OMERS, Robert worked at the Bank of Canada on a wide variety of issues related to global macroeconomics and policies. In particular, he advised Canadian policymakers on Canadian positions at the G20 and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In his most recent role at the Bank of Canada, as Division Head of the Advanced Economies Division, he focused on the economic outlooks for Europe and Japan.

He has policy and research experience regarding both advanced and emerging economy themes. Robert holds a Master’s degree in International Economics, University of Montreal, and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, University of Aix-Marseille II.

Abhay joined OMERS in October 2021 as a Director within the Total Portfolio Management group and in his current role leads the FX Management initiative at OMERS. Abhay brings with him deep FX expertise and macro insights in addition to his broad experience assessing a diversified, global, Asset-Mix with a Total Portfolio Approach.

Prior to joining OMERS, Abhay worked as a Portfolio Manager within the Office of the Chief Investment Officer at OPSEU Pension Trust, where he was primarily responsible for assisting the CIO with the oversight and management of Total Portfolio investment strategies, currency- & risk-management frameworks.

Abhay has an MBA-Finance degree from Brock University and an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India.

Abhay is an avid reader and a Chess enthusiast; his long term aspiration is to replicate the Toronto Public Library model around the world and build freely accessible libraries to foster free education and equal opportunity for all.

Jeff Brooke is a Managing Director on the OMERS Total Portfolio Management team in Toronto. He leads the portfolio construction initiatives, which employ quantitative analysis and deep fundamental research to improve insight into OMERS balance sheet and inform future investment strategies. He also contributes to the enhancement of OMERS liquidity management and currency management frameworks.

Jeff has nearly 20 years of experience in the investment management industry. Having joined OMERS Capital Markets in 2011, he was previously a member of various global macro-focused, cross-asset investment teams, expanding the use of credit derivatives within the portfolio, and scenario analysis at a total OMERS Capital Markets level. He also served as Director, Market, Liquidity & Trading Risk.

David Mitchell is the Director of Liquidity Management on the Total Portfolio Management team and in this role, he is responsible for helping manage the Plan’s overall liquidity to ensure optimal and efficient balance sheet management, with resilience to downside events and flexibility for capital deployment.

Prior to joining OMERS David spent 15 years at CPP Investments, most recently in Total Fund Management and prior to that as part of the Global Capital Markets team where he participated in the growth and change from a passive to an active, cross-asset investment mandate. Prior to CPP Investments, he began his career at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

David holds a BComm, Joint Honours Economics and Finance from McGill University and is a CFA charter holder. He is an active volunteer including with the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program, an initiative that provides free tax clinics for local communities.