Caisse de dépôt repatriates the private placements department

The private equity division of the Caisse de dépôt will be managed from the Montreal office for the first time since 2014, apart from brief interludes.

Andre Dubuc
The Press

The Caisse announced on Monday the appointment of Martin Longchamps as Senior Vice-President and Head of Private Equity. The division handles all private placements outside Quebec. Those in Quebec remain under the responsibility of Kim Thomassin, PVP and Head of Quebec.

This is a promotion for Mr. Longchamps. He held the position of Managing Director and Head of Origination and Execution – Private Placements at PSP Investments, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board.

The private placement portfolio at PSP amounts to 36 billion, according to its 2022 annual report. The head of private placement at PSP is David Scudellari.

The value of private placements at the Caisse, in Quebec and outside Quebec combined, amounts to $82.5 billion, according to the institution’s latest annual report. The Caisse is the third largest private equity investor in the world according to the Private Equity International ranking.

“This is an important appointment,” said Patric Besner, vice-president at the Institute for Governance of Private and Public Organizations (IGOPP), who was asked to comment. A significant portion of the Caisse’s returns in recent years have come from private placements. In five years, the annualized return on the private placements of the Caisse de dépôt was indeed close to 20%, before this year.

Mr. Longchamps will work from Montreal. He takes office on November 14. He replaces Martin Laguerre who had his office in New York. He has already left his post, according to our information.

The Caisse refused to specify whether it was a voluntary departure or a thank you. In the event of an involuntary departure, the managers of the Caisse are entitled to a severance indemnity, whereas they are not entitled to it when they leave on their own.

The message we hear is that Mr. Laguerre’s departure stems from a cordial agreement between the parties.

His departure has in any case nothing to do with the failed investment in the bank of bitcoins Celsius, in judicial restructuring, since this placement falls under Alexandre Synnett, PVP and chief technology officer. Mr. Synnett reports to Marika Paul, Chief Financial and Operations Officer.

Mr. Laguerre is also not responsible for another investment that went wrong: the Indian solar energy producer Azure Power Global. This investment was supported by the Infrastructures team under the leadership of Emmanuel Jaclot. We are still awaiting the annual financial statements of Azure, after nearly three months of delay.

Private placements musical chair

Mr. Laguerre replaced Macky Tall. He led private placements for a few months in 2020 after the departure of Stéphane Etroy, who led the London division from 2017 to 2019. left the organization in December 2020.

Before Mr. Etroy, Roland Lescure, then number two at the Caisse, briefly led the service in the weeks following the hasty departure of Andreas Beroutsos in 2016. The latter worked from New York.

In short, since the retirement of Normand Provost, who headed private placements from 2004 to 2013, CDP’s private placements outside Quebec division has mainly been managed from abroad. Over the years, the majority of VP Private Equity positions have moved overseas. On Monday, the Caisse did not comment on the information, contenting itself with saying that the private equity team is twice as large in Montreal as in London and almost twice as large as in New York.