Four of Canada’s leading pension funds have established a professorship in pension management at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, the school said Wednesday.

Prof. Alexander Dyck, a noted expert in corporate governance and corporate finance, will be the inaugural holder of the ICPM Professorship in Pension Management at the Rotman International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM).

The professorship was established with the support of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Hospitals of Ontario Pension Plan, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System.

“Improving pension management practices is at the heart of ICPM’s mission,” says Keith Ambachtsheer, director of Rotman ICPM and adjunct professor. “Prof. Dyck will help us explore and hopefully help us resolve some of the challenges facing pension managers today.”

Speaking on behalf of the four pension plans who established the professorship, John Crocker, president & CEO, Hospitals of Ontario Pension Plan, says, “As organizations who are successfully delivering pensions to our members, we are delighted to support new and continued research in the area of pension management with this professorship.”

As part of the professorship, Dyck will undertake research in various aspects of pension management, including governance, organization design, and the drivers of organizational performance. An additional goal is to add pension-related content to the MBA, Executive MBA and Master of Finance programs at the Rotman School.

Dyck has published widely in top finance and economics journals and lectures regularly on corporate governance. He is currently the National Academic Director of the Directors Education Program for corporate directors, jointly developed by the Institute of Corporate Directors and the Rotman School.

Dyck received an honors B.A. and the Gold Medal in economics and political science from the University of Western Ontario. He worked at the C.D. Howe Institute; as a research associate at the German Institute for Economic Research; and in 1993 earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University, where he was the recipient of a Research Council of Canada scholarship and a Bradley fellowship. Before he joined the Rotman School, he was a professor at Harvard Business School from 1993 to 2004.

IE