Full Biography

Full Biography

A third-generation Vancouverite whose grandfather and father were in the insurance business, Peter M. Brown attended the University of British Columbia. At age 20, a Montreal-based brokerage firm, Greenshields, offered to send the young graduate on a training program. Brown was assigned to corporate finance, a rare opportunity for someone just starting out. Under the tutelage of Brad Firstbrook, he turned “from a wastrel into a workaholic” who loved the atmosphere of Montreal. “It was a truly international city and Expo 67 was a great world’s fair,” Brown recalls. “It was a wonderful time to be there.” He missed his beloved B.C., however, and in 1968 asked to be transferred to the Greenshields office in Vancouver. Not long afterward he met Ted Turton. Turton had made some money in the mining business and bought control of a little investment company called H.H. Hemsworth. After a four-hour lunch, Turton said to Brown, “Why don’t you come and run it?” Brown sought the advice of his father, who told him: “Don’t do it.” His father pointed out that he was one of the youngest shareholders in Greenshields, that it was a great firm and that he had an outstanding career ahead of him. Brown, revealing the gut instinct and appetite for risk that would define his career, resigned his position at Greenshields and joined Turton at Hemsworth. CANARIM BECOMES CANACCORD: “EVERYONE SAID WE’D FAIL” The new firm, initially called Canarim, had almost no capital, no reputation to speak of and no distribution. “Everyone said we’d fail,” says Brown. Over the next year he won more than a million dollars in a regular card game, having been staked by Turton. “I loaned that money to the firm — that was the initial capital of Canaccord. It was tough going for awhile. The investment business is a Toronto head-office business, so I had to grow my own people.” Brown hired many of them right out of school, which gave Canaccord a different culture than the older, more established firms. “I needed to make it a place where people wanted to work. We were tiny, but we were passionate about the business. As we started to win, that added to the culture — the little guy taking on the big guys. Culture costs you a bit and takes time to develop, but in the long run it gets you better results. People stick with you, so you don’t have to recruit and train continuously. When people like each other, like the environment, they do better work. I’m more proud of the culture we had at Canaccord than of the financial success we enjoyed.” Through partnerships and acquisitions, the company grew steadily. Getting established in Toronto took time. “It would have been even more difficult it we’d been public,” he says. “When you’re public you have to be accretive, quarter to quarter. Toronto was a long-term project — there were losses for five straight years. Same in London — when we bought T. Hoare & Co. we had losses for three years. But we were investing, building a business. You have to keep rebirthing it, working on it. People get old, they get sick, they get rich. People change, and you have to keep up with the changes.” LESSONS FROM THE TOUGH TIMES The difference between success and failure, Brown learned, becomes clear not during good times but in tough periods. “We reacted well when markets corrected,” he says. “We constantly looked to grow, and we took over a lot of little firms that were in trouble — C.M. Oliver, Brink Hudson & Lefever, Merit Investment, T. Hoare in London. At each firm there was always a core of good people we’d keep. We were opportunistic during the hard times, and it served us well.” In 2004, Canaccord finally went public, raising $70 million in the initial IPO. “We needed the money,” says Brown, “because we were growing so fast.” A year after being listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, Canaccord completed a listing on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. The company is now dual-listed under the symbol CF. SUCCESSION PLANNING FOR CANACCORD By the time Peter M. Brown had run Canaccord for almost four decades, some large shareholders were concerned about a succession plan. “I’d never given it much thought, to be honest,” he says. “It was my baby and I guess I sort of imagined I’d be there forever. But I realized I’d had enough. It’s a very hard, stressful, Type A business — the market’s changing every minute. So I went to Paul Reynolds, who’d worked for me for 24 years, and asked if he wanted to take over.” When Reynolds assumed control, in 2012, Canaccord Genuity had $750 million in revenue, $550 million in cash, no preferred shares and a clean balance sheet. “We’d started with $23,000, and the market was now valuing us at about $1.2 billion.”