Charlie Spiring ‘back in the winner’s circle again’

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/05/2021 (1612 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Wellington-Altus Private Wealth was the only Manitoba company to make it onto the list of new winners of Canada’s Best Managed Companies this year.

There have been more Manitoba companies that have won in the past and there are a number of them who re-qualify. (I counted 15 Manitoba companies who are part of the Platinum Club designation which are winners that have maintained their Best Managed status for seven years or more.)

The “winners” are chosen from those who apply, so it’s not to say there are not many others who are deserving of such a designation. But having said that, Peter Brown a partner at Deloitte and one of the co-leads in the Best Managed Companies program, said there were about 20 per cent more applicants than normal.

The only criteria for eligibility is to be a Canadian-based private company with at least $25 million in annual revenue.

Brown said he was inspired by the stories of companies whose first priority was the safety of their employees during the pandemic. Many had to pivot, many invested in technology, and Brown said there was an increasing number of companies who said they were there to do good as well as to make money.

It’s no doubt a badge of honour for companies to earn the designation.

One company had the program logo on its website home page only hours after the winners were announced.

Charlie Spiring, executive chairman and founder of Wellington-Altus, said, “It feels good to be back in the winner’s circle again. It was one of the things that helped launch our success in round one.”

His former company, Wellington West Capital, also made it on the list.

But Wellington-Altus has only been around four years, a tight time frame for a company to be able to achieve the kind of progress Deloitte looks for in four areas: strategy; culture and commitment; capabilities and innovation; and governance and financials.

Wellington-Altus Private Wealth has assets under administration of $15 billion and 420 employees, many of whom are partners in the Winnipeg-based firm and is now officially one of the country’s best managed companies.

Wellington-Altus gets to join a club that includes the likes of Friesens Corp., Johnston Group Inc., Paterson GlobalFoods Inc., Richardson International and The Dufresne Group Inc., all great names in Manitoba Business who are among the Platinum Club members.

There’s no doubt the companies get bragging rights, but the community does as well when it is well represented in a “club” that acknowledges both financial and community support success.

It also comes on the heels of Winnipeggers’ alleged unethical involvement in the high profile receivership of Toronto-based private debt manager Bridging Finance Inc.

The Winnipeggers (or ex-Winnipeggers) that were involved, Gary Ng and Sean McCoshen, might give some the false impression that a principled approach to business is not something that is practised in Winnipeg.

“The fact that two Winnipeggers were involved in that leaves a little smell on all of us,” Spiring said.

Whether or not the allegations made in an Ontario Securities Commission investigation are true, their connection with unseemly business practices likely lets some people elsewhere in the country dust off negative notions they may have about Winnipeg.

Spiring did a lot of the heavy lifting to quiet those misconceptions when he built Wellington West into one of the largest independent financial services firms in the country. That happened at the same time another Winnipeg firm, Marty Weinberg’s Assante Capital, invented a new way to do wealth management. (Assante was sold to CI Fund Management Inc. in 2003. Wellington West was sold to National Bank Financial Group in 2011.)

In their heyday, the success of those companies created a lot of buzz about the financial services bona fides of Winnipeg that had long featured the headquarters of Great-West Life (now called Canada Life) and Investors Group (now called IG Wealth Management).

The return of the Richardson family to the financial services business with its newly named Richardson Wealth operation will help to polish the city’s credibility in the money business.

Those companies are the epitome of Canadian decorum, well-known for their community involvement as well as being highly successful enterprises with thousands of content employees.

Most of us would agree that operations like Richardson and Spiring’s Wellington-Altus and Canada Life and IG Wealth are aspirational for what we’d like the city to be known for.

As for Ng or McCoshen, neither seem to be based in Winnipeg these days in any case.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca