Alberta Investment Management Corp.

has no plans to pull back on either private credit or investments in the United States, despite concerns about souring loans in some pockets of the private market and ongoing trade tensions with the administration of

U.S. President Donald Trump.

In fact, negative sentiment in private credit could lead the Alberta-based institutional investor to take a bigger bite of the asset class even though it has already hit target exposure, said Justin Lord, AIMCo’s chief investment officer.

“We’re certainly spending more time ensuring that the exposures are being managed appropriately, as well as assessing the opportunity set in the investable universe,” he said. “Illiquidity, negative sentiment and widening spread (is creating) potential opportunity for attractive deal flow in the near to medium term.”

About five per cent of AIMCo’s portfolio is in private credit, Lord said, and the focus would be on adding high-quality senior secured exposures.

“(These) work well and we think will continue to do so, despite some of the concerns that we’re hearing and that you’re seeing on the street with respect to liquidity,” he said, noting that AIMCo has focused more on private credit in Europe than in the United States. “We haven’t seen a change yet from a watch list or default perspective.”

About 38 per cent of AIMCo’s assets under management are in the United States, including infrastructure, public equities, fixed income, infrastructure,

private equity

and, to a lesser degree, private credit, Lord said, adding that there is no intention of changing that allocation level.

 

“We still view the U.S. as a very attractive place to invest across our products,” he said.

On Tuesday, AIMCo posted a net investment return of 7.5 per cent for 2025, with public equities providing a major push. The one-year return of 18.6 per cent lifted the 10-year annualized return for the asset class to 10.9 per cent.

 

“Public equities maintained impressive performance in 2025, buoyed by investor confidence in 

artificial intelligence

-related capital investments and increased earnings expectations,” Lord said in a statement announcing the results.

However, the overall 2025 return posted by AIMCo, which invests on behalf of pensions, endowments and government funds, fell short of its benchmark, a miss attributed to a challenging year for private markets and the use of public market-linked benchmarks within private asset classes.

The one-year return from private debt and loans came closest to public equities, with a gain of 7.9 per cent. Real estate’s one-year return, meanwhile, was down 2.2 per cent and renewable resources were also down, by 0.5 per cent.

Private equity, which has experienced a punishing year, eked out a three per cent return in 2025 for AIMCo, while infrastructure investments generated a one-year return of 3.3 per cent.

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“Despite the challenging year for private markets, these asset classes continue to offer important diversification for our clients over the long term,” Lord said.

AIMCo’s four-year annualized return as of Dec. 31 was 5.7 per cent, while the 10-year return was 6.7 per cent. A balanced fund, which 

reflects a typical client mix of investments across all asset classes

, produced a 10-year return of 7.2 per cent.

• Email: bshecter@postmedia.com