It's been a little over 18 months since Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his country's relationship with the United States, based on over a century of tight economic and military cooperation, was "over". Trade talks collapsing, tit-for-tat tariffs, and Donald Trump's talk of making Canada a "51st state" have all fuelled this bitter feud between the two North American neighbours. Now, as Canada's top pitch man, Carney is looking to leverage personal relationships from his time spent in the top tiers of global finance to woo some of the world's wealthiest asset managers and business leaders to bet on his country.
For two days, Toronto will host more than 100 global investors overseeing more than C$100tn ($72tn; £53) in assets, in the hope that new economic relationships will help Canada navigate an increasingly unstable geopolitical climate. "Canada has what the world wants," said Carney ahead of this "first of its kind" investment summit. On Monday and Tuesday, a luxury hotel will host guests from major sovereign wealth funds from around the world - including the United Arab Emirates and Norway - and chief executives from major finance companies, like BlackRock's Larry Fink and Blackstone president Jon Gray.
There, Carney hopes to pitch them on Canada's energy and resource sectors, as well as the country’s political stability, in the hopes of getting them to invest in AI, defence, transportation, and infrastructure projects across the country. It is all part of a strategy to build a "more independent, more resilient economy" in Canada in the wake of the tariff war with the US, which has escalated in recent weeks. But there is no guarantee that the deep-pocketed investors will be easily sold, and challenges include a track record in Canada of lengthy approvals for projects.
A recent report by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which will co-host the summit, cautioned that the scale and depth of investible opportunity is the country's greatest weakness. "Global capital is looking for opportunity, but opportunity alone does not make a market investible," said Naomi Powell, director of the CPP Investments Insight Institute. While shifting away from its closest business partner will prove a test for Carney, the former central banker has an address book full of the world's biggest business bosses and is on first-name terms with many of them.
"These were personal invites in many cases, literally," said Goldy Hyder, president and chief executive of the Business Council of Canada. "It's not a group of politicians inviting financiers, it's a group of former financiers and investment people inviting their former buddies," added Miville Tremblay, who worked with Carney for several years at the Bank of Canada, and saw his skills on show during the 2008 global financial crisis. "He was way above everyone," he said.
"He understands finance very deeply. [He] would know when they are bluffing and when the understatement meant that something really bad was happening." Knowing the minds of investors gives the prime minister, who began his career at investment bank Goldman Sachs, an advantage this week. Carney is betting his background will boost his country's economic future, though there's little doubt that Canada stands to lose the most from any permanent divorce with the US, the world's largest economy. Tremblay said Canada seeking investment from overseas was not new, but that the selling pitch to large corporations had now changed.
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