#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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