Ralph Berg, chief investment officer at Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), is leaving the $145 billion pension fund to join Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek.

Berg confirmed his departure to The Logic, saying his last day at the Ontario fund manager will be on July 1 and that he will remain based in London, U.K., in his new role. Berg did not share details about his new position. OMERS did not publicly announce his departure.

Don Peat, an OMERS spokesperson, confirmed the departure in an emailed statement to The Logic on Wednesday, but did not address additional questions about the leadership change or if the move is part of a broader organizational or strategic shift within the pension.

“Effective immediately, Blake Hutcheson will assume the responsibilities of CIO, in addition to his positions as OMERS President and CEO,” said Peat. 

Peat declined to say whether Hutcheson is replacing Berg on an interim basis until a successor is named.

Berg joined OMERS in 2013 and was appointed chief investment officer on April 1, 2023. Over his tenure, he held several senior leadership roles, including global head of OMERS Capital Markets. Before that, he spent more than eight years with OMERS Infrastructure, including six years as executive vice-president and global head of infrastructure.

As CIO, Berg oversaw efforts to reshape the pension fund’s investment strategy, including changes to its private equity business. The pension announced in September it would stop making direct private equity investments in Europe, and instead invest alongside partners and third party managers. It also reportedly cut a Singapore-based private equity team focused on Asian investments in October. OMERS posted a 2.5 per cent decline in private equity and a $665 million net investment loss on its $25.6-billion portfolio last year, leading it to miss its internal benchmark by 1.5 percentage points.

According to OMERS’ latest annual report, Berg received total compensation of about $8 million last year. His pay package included a £250,000 long-term incentive award, a compensation program available to both the pension fund’s chief executive and chief investment officer, tied to OMERS’ long-term investment performance. OMERS valued the award at £1.83 million, paid out over five years if the fund meets specified performance targets.

Berg’s departure comes as the pension is looking to increase its exposure to Canada. In April Hutcheson told The Globe and Mail that OMERS plans to add at least $10 billion in new investments in the country to its portfolio over the next five years, increasing its domestic exposure from about 18 per cent—or about $26 billion—to 25 per cent. 

Temasek is a state-owned investment company, with a portfolio worth US$324 billion as of March 31, 2025. The firm’s investments are concentrated in Asia, with Singapore accounting for 27 per cent of the underlying exposure in its portfolio, followed by the Americas at 24 per cent and China at 18 per cent.

The Singaporean fund has been an active backer of technology and artificial intelligence companies including OpenAI, and has supported infrastructure projects tied to the sector’s growth. Earlier this year, Temasek joined the AI Infrastructure Partnership, a consortium backed by Microsoft, MGX and BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, aimed at financing and expanding the data centres, power systems and other infrastructure required to support increasingly powerful AI models.

Temasek has also partnered with Canadian pension funds on private equity and real estate investments. In 2023, La Caisse’s real estate arm, Ivanhoé Cambridge, teamed up with Temasek-owned Mapletree Investments to create one of India’s largest technology-focused office-property platforms, a venture with an investment capacity of over $2.5 billion. In 2022, PSP Investments joined Temasek and several other institutional investors in backing Australian produce supplier Perfection Fresh.