Looking for a few good advisors: Richardson Partners prepares to open its doors

(September 26, 2003) Canada’s newest investment dealer will officially open for business next week. Richardson Partners Financial, a Winnipeg-based boutique firm focused on the high-net-worth market, hopes to add 150 blue chip advisors to its team over the next two years.

“Our Winnipeg office will be open in October and the Toronto office will be open November 1,” says Richardson Partners’ CEO Mike Miller. “We’re planning to open in Edmonton on December 1, then we’ll work through Calgary, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa and Halifax in 2004 and 2005.”

Miller, along with Sandy Riley, both formerly of Investors Group, started working on a business plan for the new firm last October after being approached by the Richardson family, one-time owners of brokerage Richardson Greenshields.

“The Richardsons missed being in the financial services industry and they were looking for the right people to start it up,” Miller says.

The operation kicked into high gear in May with the hiring of the company’s management team, which includes Riley as chair, former Merrill Lynch Canada Sue Dabarno (who will run the Toronto office), as well as former executives from Assante, CIBC Wood Gundy and Fidelity.

“With good luck and good timing, we’ve been able to build a management team I think is second-to-none in the country,” Miller says.

The firm is now on the hunt for successful advisors with at least $100 million in assets who want to join as partners, not employees, Miller says. “We’ve put aside 30% of the firm for them.”

One of the first recruits is Winnipeg’s Greg Bieber of Bieber Securities, who joined the company on September 15.

The HNW market has become a popular target for advisors, with some insiders expressing concern that there are simply aren’t enough wealthy clients in Canada to justify that interest. Miller says he’s not worried.

“Everybody talks high-net-worth, but as a firm, nobody has really done it,” he says. “There are individuals within firms and those are the people we’re looking for. But in our view, no firm has done it properly.”

Since there’s no model in Canada, Richardson Partners’ has been looking to the U.S. HNW market for guidance. “We want to build a complete family office, where you have in-house tax, legal, estate planning and insurance, all under one roof,” says Miller.

While much of Canada’s financial services industry is currently fixated on consolidation, Miller believes that trend is in its final phase and the pendulum will soon swing back in favour of smaller, start-up firms, like Richardson Partners.

On the financial planning side, Miller thinks Cartier Partners and IPC Financial will be sold off in the next couple of months. After that, he expects one more big wave of consolidation in the brokerage industry once the big banks start merging, which he believes will happen.

“Then we’ll see some boutiques spring up from that,” he says. “You’ve already seen a few start-ups, such as Rockwater, Wellington West and now us, the early movers.”

“Consolidation always sows the seeds of deconsolidation,” Miller says.

Filed by Doug Watt, Advisor.ca. (09/26/03)