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Businesses urged to aim high

Spend money to make money, says BDC boss

By: Martin Cash

Posted: 10/19/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Jean-René Halde: 'Be ambitious. You cannot stand still. You have to invest in your business to keep growing.' (MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

AS president and CEO of the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), Jean-René Halde's constituency is a very large subset of the Canadian economy -- about one million small and medium-sized companies.

While Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of Canada, has been preaching the importance of productivity as a means to improve the Canadian economy, Halde has a version of the same pitch for his constituency -- the entrepreneurs who are the customers of his bank.

"We are urging entrepreneurs to aim high," Halde said in a visit to Winnipeg this week. "Be ambitious. You cannot stand still. You have to invest in your business to keep growing."

It's obviously not a radical strategy, but during this year's Small Business Week -- a BDC-led initiative -- Halde said it is a good way to remind Canadian entrepreneurs this is a great time to invest.

"The statistics show that on a per-worker basis, we under-invest in machinery and equipment compared to the U.S.," he said. "But if you look at the Canadian dollar (around par with the U.S. dollar) now is the time to buy equipment from the U.S. and it's also a time when interest rates and borrowing costs are low."

Halde knows Canadian entrepreneurs are receptive to this kind of encouragement. The BDC just released the results of a survey it conducted earlier this year that found almost 60 per cent of those surveyed said they will invest in their business in the next 12 months and 16 per cent said they are willing to invest more than $1 million.

He stressed the investment can take many forms. For instance, he said, he spoke to one entrepreneur who just set up a website and within 60 days started receiving inquiries and soon made a sale overseas. That's the kind of thing he's talking about.

"Invest to find new markets, buy new machinery and equipment, buy new technology, spend money on training and retaining skilled employees," he said. "If they could all do just a little better, if they could all buy one more piece of equipment and become just that much more productive, just sell a bit more... when you add that up across the country, it is huge."

That was one of the messages Halde was making when he spoke on Thursday night at the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce Manitoba Business Awards gala at the Fairmont hotel.

The BDC is a federal Crown corporation and functions as the country's development bank. As such, it provides a number of lending services -- term loans, mezzanine financing and venture capital -- to small and medium-sized businesses to serve their development needs.

The bank does not provide lines of credit and is not a deposit-taking or chequing institution.

It has a loans portfolio across the country of about $15.5 billion with about 28,000 clients.

Although it is one of the country's biggest players in the venture-capital field, Halde downplayed that sector in favour of shining the spotlight on small-businesses activity this week.

But he did say the BDC is very interested in a report the federal Finance Department is expected to release soon about how it plans to deploy $400 million in new venture-capital funds. Last year, the BDC put out about $127 million in venture-capital deals and has investments in about 400 Canadian companies.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca

The 2012 Manitoba Business Awards winners

StandardAero -- long-term achievement business / Winnipeg

Hemp Oil Canada -- outstanding small business

Murray Automotive Group and Centre of Brandon -- long-term achievement business / rural

Tribal Wi-Chi-Way-Win Capital Corp. -- outstanding medium business

Bison Transport -- outstanding large business

Gregg Hanson -- 2012 Lieutenant-Governor's Award recipient for outstanding contribution by an individual to the community

The Dufresne Group -- 2012 Lieutenant-Governor's Award recipient for outstanding contribution by a business to the community.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 19, 2012 B4

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