After OMERS Ventures managing partner and global head of ventures Damien Steel left for a portfolio company, industry observers speculated to BetaKit that the Canadian pension fund would soon roll its venture capital (VC) arm under the leadership of Michael Block. Almost one year to the day, that prediction has come true.
On September 10, OMERS announced the promotion of Block, previously senior managing director at OMERS Private Equity, to head of its newly-created Private Capital group. In this new role, Block will oversee Ventures, Growth, Green Tech, Life Sciences, European and Asia-Pacific private equity (PE), as well as the firm’s global funds strategy.
“As far as OMERS Ventures goes, there’s no change on our side.”
Michael Yang, OMERS Ventures
These changes come alongside news that OMERS Private Equity executive vice president (VP) and global head of PE Michael Graham is set to retire effective February 2025 after decades with the organization. OMERS said the consolidation under OMERS Private Capital is partially due to Block taking over some responsibilities held by Graham.
Graham’s OMERS career began in 2004 as VP on its PE team in Toronto. In 2009, he moved to New York to open an office there, taking on greater responsibilities until becoming global head of PE in early 2020. During this time, he helped grow OMERS’ PE business from $1.5 billion CAD to $25 billion in assets under management. Following his retirement, Graham will remain involved as a senior advisor.
The Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System is one of Canada’s largest pension funds. With Graham now on his way to retirement, OMERS will divide oversight of its PE business at the strategy level between Block and Eric Haley, senior managing director and head of North America PE at OMERS Private Equity. For his part, Haley will become head of private equity and buyout, and lead OMERS Private Equity’s buyout strategy and teams.
“Both [Block] and [Haley] are proven leaders and investors, each with a strong track record,” OMERS chief investment officer Ralph Berg said in a statement. “We have the deepest confidence in them and congratulate them on their new roles.”
These moves mark the latest in a series of changes impacting OMERS Ventures over the last several years, which saw the firm expand to Europe with a dedicated fund in 2019, launch a transatlantic fund in 2020, and share plans in early 2023 for a fifth fund with a unified global investment team. However, since then, OMERS Ventures has pulled out of Europe, replaced former leader Steel with Michael Yang, and seen other investment team members depart.
In early 2023, BetaKit sat down with Steel to discuss his bold vision for OMERS Ventures, which included a fifth fund and a unified global investment team.
RELATED: The future of OMERS Ventures with Michael Yang
But last August, OMERS Ventures pulled out of the European market to focus on North America, citing challenging market conditions, and Steel left to become CEO of Deep Sky, a Montréal-based carbon-capture startup linked to travel-tech scaleup Hopper—two OMERS Ventures portfolio companies.
Yang, the San Francisco-based managing partner who had been leading OMERS’ United States VC portfolio, replaced Steel as OMERS’ head of VC. This marked the first time OMERS Ventures has been led by someone outside of Canada since its launch in 2011.
Graham told The Globe and Mail last year that OMERS remains committed to VC and the early-stage Canadian market, specifically, but noted that OMERS will likely invest less in VC during 2023 and possibly 2024.
At the time, some industry observers that BetaKit spoke with speculated that without leadership on the ground in Canada, Block could take over OMERS Ventures and oversee it alongside the pension fund’s Growth Equity division, which he took over in April 2023.
RELATED: OMERS Ventures turnover continues with global head Damien Steel joining DeepSky as CEO
Last August, an OMERS Ventures spokesperson told BetaKit that there were no plans for Block to take over OMERS Ventures following Steel’s departure, claiming, “OMERS is committed to the Ventures platform and the leadership team believes that Michael Yang is the best person to succeed [Steel].”
This week, OMERS confirmed that with Graham out, Block would indeed be overseeing OMERS Ventures and OMERS Growth Equity going forward.
“As far as OMERS Ventures goes, there’s no change on our side,” OMERS Ventures head Michael Yang told BetaKit. “Strategy, brand, focus, and resources for Ventures are all the same. The only difference is that within OMERS, I now have a different boss named Mike.”
An OMERS spokesperson declined to provide further comment to BetaKit on these leadership changes, why OMERS decided to create a new Private Capital division, how much of a focus VC and growth equity will be for the firm going forward, or when Block and Haley will assume these new roles.
Image courtesy OMERS Private Equity.
Over the past year, the ranks of OMERS Ventures’ Canadian investment team have thinned as partner Shawn Chance, investor Charlie Renzoni, and venture partner Ken Nickerson have left the organization. Today, managing partner and head of fund operations Brian Kobus, partner Laura Lenz, and investor Taku Murahwi are OMERS Ventures’ only investment personnel in Canada.
OMERS Ventures has expanded in other markets, however, bringing on three new United States-based investment team members, including partner Ben Fu and investors Ryan Zauk and Julianna Vitolo, and hired two operations and strategy folks in Canada, including head of network development Darrell Etherington (a former BetaKit senior writer and TechCrunch managing editor) and executive assistant Alexandra Stasula. According to Yang, the firm is also looking to hire an associate focused on infrastructure software.
Asked about whether OMERS Ventures has continued to invest during this period, Yang told BetaKit that the firm has made a few new investments recently that have not yet been publicly disclosed.
He added that 2024 has been a busy year for the organization, involving “a fair bit of recruiting, several exits and other transactions that brought distributions to our [limited partners], lots of follow-ons, and several term sheets on new startups.”
Feature image courtesy OMERS Private Equity.