The appointment of an internationally-focused executive to head up Canada’s largest pension fund is the right choice, says Leo de Bever, the former head of the Alberta Investment Management Corp.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board announced Mark Machin, CPPIB’s senior managing director and head of international, will replace current CEO Mark Wiseman. Wiseman is leaving CPPIB in September to take on a senior leadership role at Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager.

Machin joined CPPIB in 2012 after working at Goldman Sachs for 20 years and heading up its Asia operations. “Putting the international guy in charge makes sense,” de Bever told BNN.

In their quest for stronger returns, Canadian pension funds are putting more emphasis on international exposure, he says. Currently about 81 per cent of CPP’s $278.9B investment portfolio is invested outside of Canada.

“Canada is only 3 per cent of the world equity market – having 18 per cent in Canada is still a relatively large overweight,” said de Bever.

CPPIB says it will maintain that exposure to Canada. There is increasing pressure on Canadian funds to invest more in Canada – but that’s a move that can backfire, says de Bever. “You can come in for a lot of criticism investing domestically because people have views about what you should be doing that aren’t necessarily related to making maximum investment returns,” he says.

De Bever was appointed as AIMCO’s inaugural CEO in 2008. He retired from the fund in 2015 and was replaced by Kevin Uebelein – an investment manager who worked in the U.S., Europe and Japan. De Bever is now chairman of chairman of Oak Point Energy – a Calgary-based energy services company.