Toron Investment Management and AMI Partners have agreed to combine to create a privately owned Canadian investment management firm specializing in global and domestic investing, the two Toronto-based firms said Thursday.
The firm, once unified, will serve clients who have entrusted more than $3.5 billion of assets in Canadian and global mandates. The combined firm will operate as Toron Asset Management International (Toron AMI), will be based in Toronto, and will continue to serve clients in Canada and abroad
The partnership allows Toron to continue its recent trend of strong growth, according to James Porter a partner and managing director with Toron. “We’ve grown our private wealth business about 25% in the last year,” says Porter. “We think we have lots more potential to grow it but one of the missing pieces was what’s called more mainstream Canadian equity and balanced mandate that we didn’t necessarily have the internal expertise to deliver, AMI brings that.”
Toron AMI’s professionals will be shareholders and the firm will operate as a partnership. Founded more than 50 years ago, AMI specializes in Canadian equity, fixed-income and balanced mandates for institutional clients. Toron began operating 25 years ago as a risk management consultancy; for the past 15 years it has focused on global investment management, serving a growing client base of private clients and select institutions.
Despite having considered other partners, this is the first merger for Toron, says Arthur Heinmaa, Toron CEO and managing partner, because the firm wanted to make sure it found a true match.
“For a fusion to work you really have to make sure that the two groups are complimentary and share the same values,” says Heinmaa. “And that’s what I think is one of the strong features of this marriage is that you have a very strong institutional Canadian manager with a strong high-net worth international manager coming together.”
The full integration of Toron AMI will take effect June 1. Details of the transaction are not being disclosed
A controlling interest in Toron AMI will be held by Toronto-based Cidel Financial Group, a leading international wealth management firm. Cidel has more than $5 billion in assets under management, and serves clients from its offices in Toronto, Calgary, and select financial centres abroad.