Power

Influence, authority, clout...they're tough to define, but impossible to mistake. The 10 listed here (and 10 runners-up) aren't necessarily the best-or richest-investors in the country. They're not even all investors. But they shape the Canadian investment industry, and when they speak, the market listens. Now more than ever.

Globe Investor Magazine,
November 18, 2008
by Tara Perkins, Nick Rockel, Sean Silcoff, Andrew Willis & Shirley Won
Photography by Lee Towndrow

Bill Holland

TITLE: Chief executive officer, CI Financial Income Fund, Toronto

VITALS: Born in Corning, N.Y., Holland grew up in Toronto and earned a BA in economics. Married, with two children.

WHAT HE CONTROLS: A 5% stake in CI, a wealth management company with $92.3 billion in fee-earning assets at Sept. 30. He also has interests in a shipping company, a kitchen-cabinet maker and Centro Restaurant in Toronto.

SHOW OF POWER: You won't find Bill Holland on the gala dinner circuit because he is too focused on his single goal: Make CI into a much bigger asset manager. The bigger it gets, the more fear he strikes into the hearts of his competitors. The most brash CEO in the industry doesn't hesitate to launch hostile takeovers, but has no fear of failure if he doesn't win. He figures he'll win the next one, and he does. Has a reputation for having one of the sharpest pencils in the business. He won't overpay for an acquisition, no matter how much he wants it.

PERFORMANCE: CI became an income trust in 2006. Units are off 25% for the year ended Sept. 30, but have an average annual return of 11% over five years.

WHAT'S NEXT: Holland is the consummate dealmaker. His aggressive expansion strategy has catapulted CI into the top ranks among diversified Canadian asset managers.

He will be one of the primary consolidators of the investment industry in the wake of the global financial crisis. He is priming CI for that. In October, CI announced plans to convert back to a corporation by 2009 to improve its buying prospects: Potential sellers want stock and not the uncertainty of income trusts. "People don't trust paper," he says.

While Holland was taken by surprise when CI's largest shareholder-Sun Life Financial Corp.-sold its 37% stake to Bank of Nova Scotia in early October, he says it is business as usual. Some analysts speculate Scotiabank will sell its fund arm to CI. Says Holland: "We'll sit down and talk about anything that makes the combined companies better."-Shirley Won

George Lewis

TITLE: Chair, RBC Asset Management Inc.; group head, Wealth Management, Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto

VITALS: Born in Pembroke, Ont., Lewis, 48, has been married to wife Leanne for 27 years. He has a 21-year-old son and a 19-year-old daughter.

WHAT HE CONTROLS: Dominion Securities, the country's largest full-service brokerage, largest private-sector asset manager and largest fund company, and an international private banking unit serving clients in 22 countries. RBC Wealth Management has $500 billion in assets under administration and more than $240 billion in assets under management.

SHOW OF POWER: A rising star within the bank who many believe is front of the line to be the next CEO. Wins power struggles. It's a Herculean accomplishment to get different divisions within a vast bank to work together. Lewis has broken down the silos within RBC and all divisions now march to his tune of selling RBC investment products.

PERFORMANCE: Lewis co-manages the RBC Global Dividend Growth Fund,which lost 9.6% for the year ended in August. He was instrumental in the Royal's $1.36billion takeover of Phillips Hager & North this year, which turned RBC into Canada's largest private-sector mutual fund manager.

WHAT'S NEXT: These have been stressful months for Lewis. His nightmare is waking up one day to find out that the bank has to spend billions to buy troubled assets out of moneymarket funds."I have to admit that before August I did not know what non-bank asset-backed commercial paper was," he says. He was at his desk one day that month when he noticed shares of BNP Paribas dropping after the French bank said it couldn't value a couple of its mutual funds due to investments tied to the U.S. housing market. "Some junior fund accountant at a global financial institution decides he or she can't value a fund, and the institution's stock is down 7% the next day," he exclaims. "I don't want that to happen." Lewis credits his team with keeping RBC's money market funds out of third-party ABCP. --Tara Perkins

David Denison

TITLE: President and CEO, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Toronto

VITALS: Born in Gander, Denison has BAs in mathematics and education (University of Toronto). Now 56, he is married and the father of two teenagers.

WHAT HE CONTROLS: A giant pension fund that will pay benefits for 17 million Canadians. CPPIB expanded its global reach last year, investing billions in the U.K., Europe, China and Mexico.

SHOW OF POWER: If you are a CEO or an investment banker trying to raise money or cut a major deal in Canada, one of your first calls is to Denison and his team. He runs a massive fund with enormous responsibility to Canadians,yet has turned CPPIB from a passive, conservative investor into an aggressive, sometimes-gutsy contrarian and global player. He shocked boardrooms around the country by leading one of two giant consortiums that bid to take slumbering BCE Inc. private in a leveraged buyout. CPPIB also jumped into the safer end of the commercial paper market last year when no one else would touch it.

PERFORMANCE: Fund is up 9.3% annualized since 2005; up 1% in Q1 of 2009 fiscal year (April to June, 2008).

WHAT'S NEXT: There aren't many investment managers whose performance matters to more than half the country.That puts David Denison in a seat of power- and it's a hot one."How these guys perform will determine how much money you get in retirement," says Tim Hodgson, CEO of Goldman Sachs Canada.

CPPIB was big, but not much of a player when it was cut free of government control in 1997. That changed under Denison. Recognizing that CPPIB was due to double to $250 billion in assets over the next decade as contributions exceeded benefits, Denison built a 24 person executive team heavy on global experience.

The pension fund's results in the fiscal year ended March 31 were down 0.3%- better than the average, given the credit crisis. CPPIB avoided problems at the centre of the financial crisis, like collateralized debt obligations-the sign of a prudent long-term investor, and a powerful one, too. It is tremendously beneficial to be a buyer when others need to sell, says Denison. -Sean Silcoff

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