Wellington West hires Kapoor

Charlie Spiring has hired a former competitor to lead the M&A charge of his growing empire.

The CEO of Winnipeg-based Wellington West Holdings Co., the newly-formed parent company of Wellington West Capital and its sister firms, has lured Kish Kapoor out of semi-retirement to be its president.

Kapoor carved out his niche in Canada’s financial services sector as the executive vice-president of Assante Corp. from 1994 to 2003 and its spin-off, Loring Ward International Ltd., from 2003 to 2005.

“This is about taking the firm to a whole new level,” Spiring says. “We’ve had wonderful success so far but Kish brings a great depth of financial and enterprise-building experience.”

Spiring says he’s counting on Kapoor, the former right-hand man to Assante founder and former CEO, Marty Weinberg, to grow the firm significantly.

“Kish is particularly adept at acquisitions and analysis. He helped turn Assante into a billion-dollar company. One of the things we haven’t done a lot of is big acquisitions. We like to see if they fit into our broader business plan.”

Wellington West, which was founded in 1993, has 28 offices across the country and $7.4 billion in assets under administration. Just nine years ago, it had $500 million in assets in a single location.

Under Kapoor’s stewardship, Assante made 26 acquisitions, including eight in the United States, and grew to more than 1,500 financial advisers. Its assets under administration, meanwhile, started out at $200 million but exploded to more than $20 billion, including $9 billion in its own proprietary product.

Kapoor says he is excited at the prospect of working at Wellington West, which he says has evolved into a “strong, mature national firm” with excellent prospects to become one of the “leading independent firms in the Canadian investment advisory business.”

“My focus is to build this firm, whether it’s through acquisition or recruiting activities. We’ll build a platform that will attract high-quality advisors, planners and firms to join Wellington West,” he says.

Kapoor, who spent the past year visiting his parents in Africa, says he’s looking forward to getting back in the saddle.

“I’ve been in the financial services industry a long time, it’s something I love doing and I wanted to be back in that space again, especially in a business that caters to clients through advisors and planners,” he says.

“I’ve got a clear head, a clear mind and a clear body. I’m well prepared and enthusiastic about what I’m going to do.”

Kapoor’s non-compete clause, which had been in place since the $846-million sale of Assante to CI Fund Management in 2003, expired this spring. He doesn’t officially start at Wellington West until January but he says he has already begun work on the company’s strategic direction.

Kapoor said another element that attracted him to Wellington West was the chance to live and work in Winnipeg.

“It’s a home for incredibly talented people and it’s been really good to me. It’s a great place for us to be able to think outside the box and without all the noise one tends to have in the big centres. We can watch from afar,” he says.

Spiring says the parent company was formed shortly after Wellington West bought back its nine per cent ownership stake from Crocus Investment Fund this fall.

Kapoor is a director of two Winnipeg-based companies, telco MTS Allstream and biopharmaceutical firm, Medicure Inc. He spent 14 years of his career as a tax partner with KPMG LLP. Last month, Wellington West announced its intention to take 20 per cent of the company public within two years.

(11/29/06)