Frank Ieraci

Senior Managing Director | CPP Investments | Global Head of Active Equities & Investment Science

"Global Head of Active Equities and Investment Science at CPP Investments; disciplined, data-driven alpha generation for the Canada Pension Plan."

Fund Manager

Biography

Frank Ieraci is Senior Managing Director at CPP Investments, where he leads the Active Equities and Investment Science group — the team responsible for generating alpha (returns above benchmark) in global public equities on behalf of more than 22 million contributors to the Canada Pension Plan.

He has spent his career on the institutional side of investing, advancing through CPP Investments to head its data-driven research effort as Managing Director of Research and Portfolio Strategy before joining the senior leadership team in fiscal 2021. His current mandate extends well beyond any single sector and covers the full set of active equity strategies CPP runs, including exposure to mining and resource issuers held inside the fund's broader portfolio.

Ieraci is a CFA charterholder and an adjunct professor of finance at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He has spoken publicly on disciplined active management — including conversations on AI-driven equity valuations, the move from spreadsheet-based analysis toward coding-based tools, and how large pools of long-horizon capital can compound through process rather than narrative.

For resource investors, his relevance is institutional rather than commodity-specific: the alpha framework his group builds shapes how CPP prices and weights resource holdings, and his commentary on discipline over theme offers a counterweight to the cycle-driven conviction that runs through much of mining coverage. The record of his direct commodity calls is thin and is not publicly surfaced.

Videos (1)

CPP Investments | Frank Ieraci and Jimmy Connor

guest Mar 6, 2026

Top takeaway Frank Ieraci says CPP Investments was a big Nvidia investor from 2018 through 2025 on a GPU-in-AI thesis, calls it a tremendous investment, and rejects framing today's AI market as a repeat of the tech bubble, seeing pockets of value instead.
He explains CPP Investments targets a risk level rather than static asset allocations, and his active equities group runs a bottom-up, market-neutral portfolio with a 3-5 year horizon and 20-25% annual turnover, benchmarked per strategy rather than to the MSCI World Index.
He notes about 12% of the fund's roughly $780 billion is invested in Canada, a significant overweight, while Active Equities as of the interview holds no gold miners because producer valuations look too rich with gold at or near $5,000 an ounce.
He says the fund invests across the AI landscape, including data centers globally through its real assets and infrastructure teams, and was a very early investor in Waymo.
He argues Norway's sovereign wealth fund should not be compared apples-to-apples with CPP Investments: its roughly 70% public-equity allocation reflects a different objective function, not necessarily more risk.

CPP Investments targets a risk level rather than fixed asset allocations, flexing across sectors, geographies, and asset classes to find the best risk-reward. The fund owns no gold or gold miners today; management sees producers as richly valued after gold's run toward $5,000 an ounce. Central banks have lifted gold buying to as much as 30% of annual production since 2022, a key driver behind the metal's rally. On energy, CPP Investments would evaluate Canadian pipelines and infrastructure if shown a real economic case and durable assets. With a 3-5 year holding horizon and 20-25% annual turnover, the fund argues scale lets active management beat ETFs.

Showing 1–1 of 1 videos

Key Works

Delivering Alpha with Discipline: A Conversation with Frank Ieraci (2024)

CPP Investments Insights Institute long-form conversation on his approach to active equities, risk and discipline.

Specializations

Canada Macro Mining Stocks

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