#Onex has thrown in the towel and off-loaded #Gluskin Sheff to #RBC. The fig leaf for Onex: Royal will distribute their private market products. It is an embarrassing and ignominious end to the Onex $445 million acquisition of the then-public Gluskin. 1/n
Those with long memories will recall the glory days of G+S when they hosted the Barnes Exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1994. It was an over the top coming out party and prepared the company to go public a couple of years later. 2/n
Based on its 2% management fee and 20% share of profits the public company had a peak value well over $500 million before things started to go south. Ira Gluskin, the brilliant investment strategist, retired. Gerry Sheff, the entrepreneur and visionary, left too 3/n
Soon enough the public was subjected to the tawdry sight of the two founders suing the company they had built for tens of millions. After that it was retreat and the loss of identity as an individual entity; it was folded into the mammoth Onyx empire. 4/n
Now those clients who thought they were getting curated private wealth management by an independent firm are just more grist for the giant RBC mill. Make no mistake: Once the bank owns you, you soon start to look, smell and feel like a bank. 5/n
When I started #Baskin Wealth in the mid-1990s I looked up to Gluskin as the gold standard, the exemplar of all that private wealth management could and should do. Our model of managers owning the company and being in direct contact with clients was based on what we saw there 6/n
The increasing consolidation of the Canadian wealth management sector with many acquisitions of smaller employee-owned firms is a trend we decry. We continue to believe that clients dealing with owners provides an experience the giants cannot match. 7/n
So, goodbye Gluskin Sheff. Another one bites the dust. Sic transit gloria.

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More from @DavidBaskinBWM

Mar 26
It is not surprising that media folks are dunking on #Canadian Banks. After all, there are bank crises in Europe and the US; why should we be exempt? They are easy columns to write and carefully couched: "it is possible"; "perhaps"; "we cannot rule out". Weasel words. 1/n
The last bank to fail in Canada was Home Bank in 1923. The banking sector was ruthlessly consolidated and now there are only six important banks and three or four small outliers in the country. As a result, each major bank is by definition systemically important in Canada. 2/n
The banking sector is closely regulated, much more so than in the US. There is no political hay to be made in Canada by asking for looser regulation. It is impossible to overstate the political disaster that would result from the failure of a Canadian bank. 3/n
Read 7 tweets
Nov 3, 2020
On Oct. 31st I hit the 40 year mark working in financial services. I have been a commercial banker, a private equity financier and for the past 25 or so years, a portfolio manager. As an insurance company ad says, I've learned a thing or two because I've seen a thing or two 1/n
I was doing private equity during the DJIA crash in 1987 and bailed out on a cottage purchase I was about to sign that afternoon. I was involved in funding Israeli start-ups in the mid to late '90s when Israel became the country with the 2nd most listings on NASDAQ 2/n
I was a still wet behind the ears money manager when #Nortel became the highest cap company on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and I lost 30% of my client base one month in 2000 because I refused to buy all the dot.com garbage that was making new daily highs. 3/n
Read 10 tweets
Jun 16, 2020
In September, 2004, we were retained by an 81 year old man, who entrusted $1 million to us. During the ensuing 16 yrs he neither added to nor withdrew from his portfolio. This week, I will review his portfolio with him (by phone, sadly). Here are some interesting highlights.
The value of the portfolio today is $3,894,334. The money has almost exactly doubled twice, and the compound return including income and fees, has been 9.2%. With no money in and no money out the math is easy and not subject to distortion by time value or money value calculations
Lots of stocks have come in and out of this portfolio over 16 years but here are some of the unrealized gains as of today:
Brookfield Asset 513%
First Service Corp 203%
Alphabet Class C 212%
Apple 601%
JP Morgan Chase 277%
Microsoft 898% (cost of $24/sh!)
Visa Inc. 388%
Read 7 tweets
May 27, 2020
In 1982 I worked in the bad loans department of $BMO.CA. This was in the wake of the ultra-high interest rate war on inflation, when prime got up to 22.5%. My job was to call loans and put people out of business. In the fall of 1982, just before the bank's Oct. 31 year end...1/n
The Sr. V.P. for credit called us all together. "This" he said, "will be a kitchen-sink quarter. You are to recommend write-offs on any bad loans and fully provisions on any dubious loans. We are going to take massive reserves because it is bad politics to show big profits" 2/n
So that's what we did. Anything with the least taint of failure was labeled as bad, the bank took a big profit hit, and as the recovery took hold and rates quickly came down, many provisions were reversed. Why do I tell this story now? Because we all need to recognize...3/n
Read 7 tweets
Jan 12, 2020
This is a thread about real-world wealth management, which I have been doing for over 25 yrs. Last week I posted a note about a client whose $200k account is now over $1 million after 22 yrs growth at +8%/yr. The responses were so interesting.
Some said "she could just have bought an index and done as well". Others said "think how much more she would have had if she didn't pay fees". Others thought it impossible that the account had done that well over that long a period. So I will address each comment
For almost all of our clients, wealth management is about a lot more than just chasing high returns. We manage risk, consider taxes, think about extended families and talk about planning over decades. Obviously you don't get that when you buy an S&P Index ETF.
Read 12 tweets

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