Now that Toronto-based investment-management giant CI Financial Corp.’s acquisition of Sentry Investments Corp. has officially closed, CI has moved to implement significant layoffs at Sentry.

The recent spate of layoffs extends across all levels of the organization at Sentry, the Toronto-based fund management firm, including client relationship staff, sales representatives and senior portfolio managers.

Gaelen Morphet, Sentry’s executive vice president and chief investment officer, who joined Sentry in August 2016 from Empire Life Investments Inc., is among those leaving.

“We have started to integrate Sentry and CI and there’s overlap across all areas of the business,” says Steven Donald, executive vice president with CI. “There are some good people that unfortunately we haven’t been able to keep. However, we have also been able to keep some good people, which is one of the reasons we pursued Sentry.”

Sentry’s remaining portfolio managers will continue to operate as strong and separate team underneath the CI umbrella, similar to other independently branded CI investment teams including Signature, Harbour and Cambridge, Donald says.

Some of the smaller investment mandates formerly managed by Sentry’s team will be taken over by other portfolio managers within the CI fold, Donald says.

“On the sales side, the new combined team covers the entire country and will be one of the largest in the country,” he says.

The acquisition of Sentry has brought $19 billion in assets under management (AUM) under CI’s roof, increasing the size of CI’s AUM by 16% to $140 billion.

“As we look across our offerings,” Donald says, “CI has one of the broadest and deepest portfolio management teams across the country, and Sentry is an important part of that.”

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