This Week in Canadian Money: CPP Investments has almost $800B in assets

Plus: a new BMO offer for students, ads for a Lululemon board fight, and more.

May 22, 2026

Hey, welcome back.

Before I get into what happened this week, you might be wondering who else is reading this newsletter. I can tell you that you’re in excellent company.

This newsletter is read by:

Professionals in Canadian finance and beyond - ranging from analysts to directors to even a few CXOs, plus some members of the media.
Folks who work at all the big Canadian banks, some of the pensions, credit unions, fintechs, and more.
Students in both undergrad (mainly Commerce) and MBA programs.
Many CFAs, CPAs, MBAs, and some JDs.
Over 90% of readers are in Canada.

Now for what happened this week in Canadian money. Here are 4 things that caught my eye:

1. Blossom now connects with all major Canadian brokerages

Blossom is an investing social network/app.

Has 500K+ users
Users can connect their brokerage account to the app to share their portfolio with others
Can connect with Wealthsimple, Questrade, CIBC Investor’s Edge, BMO InvestorLine, etc.
Portfolios can be shared as a % or in $ amounts

Personally, I wouldn’t share the dollar amounts of my portfolio (can’t be having people seeing where I’m allocating my $10B nest egg).1

2. BMO partnered with Best Buy on a new offer for students

Students who open a new chequing account get a “Tech Reward” worth up to $200.
The website currently lists the reward as one of: Nespresso machine, Sony headphones, JBL speaker, Fujifilm camera.

My take

It makes sense that companies try to get new customers when they’re students or when they’re young, especially in personal banking since it tends to be sticky: How many of us still use a bank account we opened (or our parents opened for us) years ago and never bothered to change? I’d bet a lot of us.

And over all those years of having an account, we might have been paying $6.95 or even $17.95(!!) in monthly fees. For the bank, that makes up for a $200 upfront offer many times over.

With back-to-school season happening later in the summer, I’m sure we’ll be seeing many more offers for university and college students.

3. CPP Investments released its annual report

The fund ended the fiscal year with net assets of $793B
At the end of last year it had $714B
- YoY change of +$79B (↑11%)

Two aspects of this are interesting to me:

(a) The fund has close to $800B in assets!

(b) The $79B increase in net assets came from two main sources:

Net income → $57B
- This is investment returns, interest income, dividend income, etc.
Net transfers from CPP (Canada Pension Plan) → $22B
- Contributions from Canadians and employers.

Whenever I see growth in an AUM number, I find it’s worth thinking about what’s behind it - not just the investments, but also the breakdown of growth from actual performance vs growth from contributing more money.

So in this case, about 72% of the $79B increase came from performance and returns, and over a quarter, about 28%, came from adding more money to the pot.

4. Lululemon is running LinkedIn ads for its shareholder vote?

For background:

Lululemon is going through a proxy fight over who should be on the board of directors.
The fight is between the company’s Board and its founder and largest shareholder, Chip Wilson.

The proxy fight itself is interesting. But what caught my eye this week is that I saw multiple Lululemon ads on LinkedIn – not to promote their products like a typical ad would – but to encourage shareholders to vote for director nominees:

three screenshots of LinkedIn ads by Lululemon encouraging people to vote in the shareholder vote about board of directors — Lululemon LinkedIn ads about shareholder vote

When you click the ads, they take you to a section of their website dedicated to the vote.

This is really interesting! I would assume reaching shareholders is pretty straightforward: they receive their proxy voting card in the mail or virtually through email. Presumably there would be no need to advertise.

I’ve never seen a company have ads for something like this. Even more interesting is I’m not even a shareholder – I have no say in this vote – yet I’m seeing the ads.

Looking into it, when I click the “Why am I seeing this ad?” button, it says the company wants to reach people based on:

Interests (“Financial Investing”)
Those who follow the Lululemon company page
Country

And the ad is paid for by Joele Frank, a PR firm:

I assume Lululemon and its PR firm are using the ads to:
(a) Reach shareholders who might not realize the vote is happening.
(b) [More likely in my opinion] Raise general awareness about the proxy fight/vote (how that helps, I’m not sure).

Let me know: Have you seen these ads on LinkedIn?