Fintech Meetup’s Post

Today evening's big news is that Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Vanderbilt University, and University of Illinois Foundation have all joined Bilt Rewards' cap table. Ontario Teachers' not only sees a great consumer and merchant product, but also sees Bilt's value proposition to real estate owners & property managers (given their ownership of real estate businesses). The company has another $150MM in additional equity, bringing its balance sheet to $400MM in cash (with no debt). They will continue being profitable this year on an EBITDA basis. Bilt has members in all 50 states and they are spending $30B annualized (a figure that is growing very quickly). It pays to be a Bilt rewards member at tens of thousands of local neighborhood merchants. They have 21K restaurants on their merchant rewards network & 3.5K fitness studios. They are expanding into healthcare, gas, and groceries. In an ecommerce world, Bilt is bringing back the joy of buying locally. Good news for the team (cc: Ankur Jain, David M. Wyler, Daniel Seder, Zoe Oz, Brandt Smallwood, Sean Walsh). Glad for Acrew Capital to be an investor.

The momentum is very real. One month at Bilt is like 6 months anywhere else. Our latest fund raise happened because we have palpable traction executing a loyalty platform for the home, the neighborhood, and travel. A platform that creates value for customers, merchants and property managers alike. A distribution model more efficient than anything I’ve seen 20 years in the industry. Ask yourself what a pension fund is looking for when they place a bet - what we are building will bear fruit for decades to come.

Pension Justice Case Study ⤵️ This case study is from back in 2022 - but shows just how important it is to persevere with a case and follow the steps to receive full compensation. Our client previously held a pension with the British Steel Pension Scheme. He was approached by Douglas Baillie Limited and advised to open a SIPP with Berkeley Burke - transferring his British Steel Pension into the SIPP which invested in a development known as Harlequin in the Dominican Republic. Harlequin was meant to be an up-market hotel but was never actually built. Thousands of pension investors lost money by sinking their life savings into this scam. The Harlequin “investment” subsequently failed and our client lost his entire pension. A claim was made to the FSCS against Douglas Baillie Limited and our client was awarded £50,000 compensation. We then assisted our client in making a further claim for compensation against Berkeley Burke to the FSCS on account of their failure to carry out any or any sufficient due diligence on Douglas Baillie Limited. Douglas Baillie Limited had been prolific in their referral of clients to Berkeley Burke and their promotion of the Harlequin scheme. Following this, our client then received a further £43,176, bringing his total compensation to £93,176. #Compensation #Success #WealthManagement

Good morning. Here’s your Tuesday round-up of the latest news and views from EG. 🤝 Sterling Property Ventures Ltd has bought a mixed portfolio of seven assets from BlackRock, acting on behalf of British Airways Pensions Trustees, in a £236m deal.   The portfolio includes a 330,894 sq ft warehouse in Wakefield let to Cubico (UK) Ltd, a 231,252 sq ft distribution unit at Interchange 26 in Bradford, let to Advanced Supply Chain Group Ltd and two grade A, fully-let office buildings expanding to 89,639 sq ft at Windsor Dials in Berkshire. 🏙 Those awaiting a decision on Freshwater Group’s planning proposals for the redevelopment of Tenter House at 45 Moorfields, EC2, will be left on tenterhooks since the planning meeting to discuss the scheme has been pushed back, possibly by as much as two months. The scheme had been expected to come in front of the City of London Corporation’s planning applications sub-committee meeting on 2 July. It is understood that the meeting will now focus solely on Stanhope PLC’s proposals for 1 Undershaft, EC3. 🎓 90 North Real Estate Partners and Rasameel Investment Company' شركة رساميل للاستثمار's Academy Investment Fund has put a purpose-built student accommodation portfolio up for sale, with a £84m price tag. The sellers have appointed Harris Associates to find buyers for “The Collection”, which consists of five properties totalling 795 bedrooms. The price reflects a 6.37% net initial yield. 🏗 Get Living is looking to sell a student accommodation site in its East Village masterplan in Stratford, E20, for offers over £30m. The N16 plot has planning permission for 504 student bedrooms, in two towers of 10 and 15 storeys. It is understood that Get Living has appointed Savills to advise on the sale. 🏢 And, the joint liquidators of collapsed charity and members’ club the The House of St Barnabas have appointed agents to find a new organisation for its Soho Square building. The Grade I listed Georgian building, on 1 Greek Street, W1, has a private garden and is held on trust for charitable purposes. Built between 1744 and 1747, the property provides space for a members’ club over the ground and first floors, as well as kitchens, offices, a chapel and one of the largest private gardens in Soho. Liquidators at professional services firm Evelyn Partners have instructed Allsop LLP on the search. It is being offered as a new long leasehold with a ground rent, although other options may be considered. The agent is not guiding a price. ⬇ All this and much more in the link below ⬇

Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan is polishing up its portfolios to get ready for a pickup in deal-making, but a slow market for mergers dominated by bargain-hunting buyers is making it hard to sell assets, reported The Globe and Mail. "Stock markets have mostly been on the rise in the first six months of this year, but owners of privately held assets have had to be patient. Teachers invests a large share of its $255.8-billion of assets in private markets, and would typically look to sell some of its long-held or lower-performing investments to recoup cash that can be used to make new deals." "With buyers and sellers still rarely seeing eye to eye, that has meant Teachers is holding on to companies, real estate and infrastructure assets for longer than it typically would before reaping the full gains from investments. And the pension fund has increased the amount of energy it devotes to maintaining and improving what it already owns – to boost returns in the near term, and to make them attractive to potential suitors when deal-making rebounds." https://lnkd.in/gtabHzjc #canada #investment

Heads-up to intermediate planners with strong policy/zoning skills: Moncton will shortly be posting for a Senior Planner in the Long-Range Policy Planning unit. Watch this space. It might be particularly appealing to young-ish, houseless planners in Ontario (GTA, Ottawa.) When I was in Ottawa, a big negative was how you'd reach the intermediate P2 stage and then stagnate for years or decades because there were so few Senior P3 planner positions. When one finally opened up, everyone turned into Clancy Brown in Highlander. This is a chance to move up by moving away. You can also still buy a house here on a professional's salary, unlike Ontario. The intergenerational Ponzi scheme that is Canada's housing market has not advanced quite so far here. And the pension seems much better managed than OMERS. Part of why I left Ontario was the top-heavy pension fund with 14 VP's, whose underperformance meant benefit cut after benefit cut and no end in sight. The pension here is really 2% times best five--unlike OMERS, where that "2%" is actually "2% minus the CPP you'd be earning with your CPP contributions anyway, even if you weren't in a pensioned job." (They call that "harmonized with CPP.") The early-retirement penalty here is 3.5%/year early, vs. 5% in OMERS. That adds up if you decide to retire at 60 or 55. And.... life is pretty good here. There are beaches. There's a downtown. I say that as someone whose life goal was to live on the Plateau in Montreal and whose heart broke when I learned it wasn't in the cards. Moncton is pretty good. Just think about it. And tell your friends.

A growing number of teachers in British Columbia are speaking out against their pension fund, the BC Teachers' Pension Plan, being invested in the fossil fuel companies that are wrecking their students' future. "I have been a B.C. teacher since 1996 and have sent more than 5,000 students, armed with knowledge of literature and psychology, into a world that climate scientists are warning will soon be unlivable if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels," writes Vancouver teacher Jillian Maguire. What is also starting to become public knowledge is how public pensions overseen by Crown corporations are shovelling obscene amounts of money into the pockets of fossil fuel companies, making retirement savings yet another fossil fuel subsidy. The BC Teachers’ Pension Plan, which is managed by the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI), is the official pension plan for the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF). Teachers give 11.13 per cent of their paycheques, plus 11.3 per cent contributed by the employer, to the Crown corporation, which invests in such climate-destroying companies as ExxonMobil, TC Energy, Suncor, Teck Resources, Imperial Oil and KKR Private Equity. These corporations have all recently come under fire for rampant environmental destruction and the trampling of Indigenous rights... BCI has no Paris-aligned targets, is not a member of any credible Paris-aligned investor body, has placed no exclusions on new investment in oil and gas and worst of all, has no policy requiring companies to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights to free, prior and informed consent for projects affecting them. In February, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis released a report claiming that a strategic divestment plan would actually strengthen the BC Teachers’ Pension Plan. The report states that “over the last decade, shedding oil, gas and coal has proven a winning financial strategy — even taking the recent energy crisis into account.” In fact, one study by Corporate Knights estimates that had BCI divested 10 years ago, portfolio returns may have been 37.4 per cent higher, which equates to roughly $18,000 more per member." #bcpoli #cdnpoli #pensions #sustainablefinance #climaterisk

The Wall Street Journal | The board overseeing Canada’s $461 billion national pension plan is shifting the focus of new real-estate investment away from bricks-and-mortar buildings and toward infrastructure and energy… The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board…sold its stake in a downtown San Francisco office tower that once housed Uber Technologies’s offices for $44 million. CPPIB bought the stake in 2014 for $219 million. And the fund said it signed an agreement in March to sell its stake in a building at 10 East 53rd Street in Manhattan for $7 million, after buying it in 2012 for $57 million. Privately managed funds tracked by the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries reported a negative 12% return in 2023, double the loss pension funds booked. The tracked funds hold a mix of apartment, industrial, retail and office properties. #SDGs #HybridWorkplace #WFH #WFA #WalkableUrbanism #20MinuteNeighbourhoods #TimelessUrbanism

A coalition of leading Canadian pension funds that collectively manage over $2 trillion in assets has submitted a letter to the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (CSSB) recommending that it reconsider proposed exemptions for sustainability reporting given global and domestic investors’ expectations. The letter emphasizes the coalition’s strong support for adopting the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) Sustainability Disclosure Standards as proposed and underscores their view that adhering to existing ISSB guidelines supports consistency in reporting and investor confidence. The letter is signed by representatives from the following major pension funds: BCI Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) CPP Investments | Investissements RPC HOOPP (Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan) OMERS Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan PSP Investments University Pension Plan Ontario Interested in reading the letter? Access it here: https://lnkd.in/eDEH4Y7w

I thought when Pension Age in The UK was changed, there would be parity and EVERYONE would retire at 60. It seemed totally fair. This time bomb was ticking LAST CENTURY, so to raise Retirement Age to 67, is a real admission of failure. The UK totally f*cked it, several decades ago. It's incredible that 'the Golf Club Set' and 'entrepreneurs' on here, never mention this? Probably because they never had a boss. Because it turned out fine for them. They've never had to bother. It's hard to save for a Pension, when you run out of money on the 23rd of every month. In a Landscape where we STILL have The Isle of Man, 'Londongrad', The Channel Islands and the 'overseas protectorates' like The British Virgin Islands and The Cayman Islands, how is it even possible that this has bitten the UK on the bum? How has it got to a stage where the UK can't afford it? We have untaxed £TRILLIONS, offshore. Simply make these places illegal, problem solved. Just HOW does the UK have such a bad Pension? For this ONE reason alone, Scotland needs to move away from this toxic environment. England, 60 million people. Scotland, less than 6 million people. It's actually very simple!