Dave Kelly named head of Gluskin Sheff

Onex Corp. has appointed Dave Kelly, former senior vice-president and head of TD Wealth Private Wealth Management, as head of Gluskin Sheff + Associates. He began the role Wednesday.

“Dave’s experience building strong operational functions to support high-quality, growing private wealth businesses is a strong asset to our business, team and clients,” said Bobby Le Blanc, president of Onex, in a release. “We feel well-positioned to execute on the strategy we’ve outlined and grow over the long-term.”

Kelly reports to Le Blanc in the newly created role of head of Gluskin Sheff. The role replaces the CEO title.

As a result, CEO Jeff Moody has stepped down. As of today, Moody is now vice-chair of Gluskin Sheff, where he’ll focus on client portfolio oversight and management, a spokesperson told Advisor’s Edge. Moody will remain on Gluskin Sheff’s investment committee.

Kelly joins Gluskin Sheff with more than 25 years of experience within retail banking, full-service brokerage and discretionary investment counselling. He spent the past 14 years of his career at TD, where he began in 2007 as regional vice-president and market leader of private client services at TD Waterhouse. He departed TD at the end of September.

Kelly noted in the release that Gluskin Sheff intends to “accelerate” its growth plan, which Moody outlined during his presentation at Onex 2021 Investor Day in October.

At the time, Moody stated Gluskin Sheff’s target of delivering a 10% annual growth rate in fee-generating client capital, made up of 5% market growth and 5% organic growth. He added that outflows had stabilized following the 2019 purchase by Onex, with redemptions down by 35%. Year-to-date inflows, Moody noted, had increased by about 75% when compared to January to October 2020.

“Markets will contribute to our growth, but our primary focus is on growing and adding fee-generating AUM, through new and existing client relationships,” Moody said at Investor Day. “Over the next decade, we expect to benefit from the anticipated trillion-dollar wealth transfer opportunity in Canada. As we think about sources of new clients, we see great opportunity in generating new relationships with the next generation of wealth creators, stewards and inheritors, deepening our focus on key Canadian markets and expanding internationally.”

Kelly’s departure from TD was announced in June, when an internal memo stated that he “made the personal decision to leave TD to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions.” Paul Clark replaced Kelly as head of TD Wealth Private Wealth Management.