After a disastrous fiscal 2008, Quebec's Caisse de Depot et Placement is recovering its financial health.
The Caisse made back billions on its investments this past year, but Canada's largest pension fund manager still fell short of its goals.
However President and CEO Michael Sabia says the agency made significant progress.
"Given where we were, where the year started, the challenges that we faced in a variety of areas... No I think we did the best we could," said Sabia.
The Caisse suffered a $40 billion meltdown in fiscal 2008, losing a full quarter of its value because it was heavily exposed to asset-backed commercial papers.
Following that disastrous year, the Caisse changed leadership, rebalanced its portfolio investments, and took other measures that let it take advantage of improvements in the stock market to the tune of $12 billion.
"I don't have, and I think we don't have any sense that there's, you know, an important decision or an important call that we didn't make or that we made a bad call on," said Sabia.
15 of the Caisse's 17 portfolios made money, and ten of them performed above target, but overall, the Caisse fell short of its goals by four percent, dragged down by a collapse of prices in real estate.
It also underperformed compared to its peer pension agencies across the country.
However analysts think the Caisse has turned the corner.
Scotia McLeod wealth management director Arnold Zwaig says 2009 was a transition year for the Caisse.
"You can argue that part of the year, there was no real management team in place," said Zwaig. "So the fact that they made ten percent versus their global benchmark of 14 is actually positive.
Sabia agrees, saying the Caisse is now running as it should.
