Chairman’s Message

By now, most of our readers will have seen the news that Northwood Family Office will be acquired by CI Financial. I thought I’d provide some brief insight on the path we took to get here and why we are excited about the future.

About two years ago, Northwood engaged a consultant to help us update our strategic plan. The primary objective was to agree upon where we want to go in the next phase of our business and what we had to do to ensure we set up the firm for long term success. Central to this objective was ensuring we had the right ownership, leadership, and management structures in place to take care of our clients and retain and incentivize our staff team.

Internally, we had already begun the process of leadership development and management training, so that was well in hand. From an ownership standpoint, given that the co-founders own a large share of the company, Northwood also needed a financial partner to provide permanent, stable capital, and to facilitate liquidity and an orderly ownership transition to the next generation of staff. This will help ensure continuity and stability for clients over the long term.

We hired an investment banker to explore opportunities for a financial partner. We wanted to ensure we had a good solution in place so we could make decisions from a position of strength and with a long enough runway to properly prepare the next generation of leaders.

All the way through this process, we have been focused on meeting the needs of our three primary stakeholders – clients, staff, and shareholders. We wanted a partner who could meet our key criteria — respecting the independent, objective nature of our advice to clients, sustaining and building the entrepreneurial culture of the firm, and valuing our people and seeing them as business and financial partners, (including providing opportunity for them, and equity participation in the continued growth of the firm for key leaders.) We also were interested in a partner that could provide strategic resources to both improve our service to clients and help us grow the firm.

We did an extensive search and CI came out on top in all categories. We are excited about this solution because we believe it meets the goals for all of our stakeholders and sustains the objective, entrepreneurial, client-centric culture we’ve worked so hard to build over the last 20 years. By partnering with CI, we’re confident that this will endure, to the benefit of successive generations of client families as well as current and future staff.

As you may be aware, CI is now one of the leaders in private wealth management in North America, having partnered with over 25 independent high net worth and ultra-high net worth firms over the past several years. They have established themselves as the go-to partner for high quality wealth firms in search of permanent, strategic capital, and wealth management is now their largest business. CI also has extensive resources that we will be able to tap into and which will help us move to the next stage of growth and development.

What will be the effects of this transaction? First and foremost, nothing is changing for clients. They will still have the same team, strategy, custodian, fee schedule, and independent advice. All financial planning and investment management decisions will still be led by our existing team. All executives and staff will be staying with the firm and will continue to own a significant share of it.

We intentionally chose a partner that shares our strategic ambitions and aligns with our culture and values. CI wants us to run the business just as we have been doing and continue to grow it as the leader in the Family Office/ Ultra High Net Worth category in Canada. Research tells us that there are 10,000 people in Canada with more than $30 million in net worth. This is our core target market, and we see a significant opportunity to continue to serve our current clients and add to our growth. We’re also keen to be part of building a broader CI Private Wealth platform and by the opportunities it will bring for our clients and team members.

We are grateful to our clients, staff and community for their strong support and confidence over the years. We are looking forward to continuing our work with clients and earning their trust every day. We are enthusiastic about our partnership with CI and the opportunities it affords us to continue to serve our clients, further develop and motivate our staff as owners, and to grow the business for the benefit of all our stakeholders. If you have any questions, please call or email me directly.

While we have been very busy with this transaction, the firm continues to grow -- with the addition a dozen staff during the pandemic period, including two new associates in late 2021. I continue to be amazed at the excitement from new hires joining the family office space. We used to have to spend significant time educating applicants about family offices, but this has changed in recent years with many young, bright applicants eager to enter this growing field This leaves me very optimistic for a bright future as we continue to grow and serve our clients.