Brockhouse Cooper

Pavilion Financial Corporation acquires U.S.-based Stratford Advisory Group

Winnipeg, January 6, 2012 – Pavilion Financial Corporation, an employee-owned global financial services firm based in Winnipeg, Canada, today announced that it has acquired Stratford Advisory Group, a full-service institutional investment consulting firm based in Chicago, Illinois.  The transaction closed at the end of 2011.  Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

This is Pavilion’s second acquisition in the institutional investment advisory sector, having previously acquired Montreal-based Brockhouse & Cooper Inc.

Pavilion Financial Corporation President and CEO Martin Weinberg said the Stratford acquisition enhances Pavilion’s ability to serve institutional clients in the United States.  "While Brockhouse Cooper currently services institutional clients in Canada, the U.S., Japan and the United Kingdom, Stratford materially enhances our capabilities in the United States.”

“Stratford is distinguished by its proactive consulting approach with pension funds, endowments, foundations, healthcare organizations and other institutional clients in the competitive U.S. market.  I believe that the clients of both Stratford and Brockhouse Cooper will benefit from the combined experience and expertise that our teams have gained in working with institutional investors.  The merged resources of our firms will significantly improve the information and advice we are able to provide clients, helping them navigate turbulent markets more effectively,” said Mr. Weinberg. 

Mr. Weinberg also noted that Stratford is Pavilion's first acquisition in the U.S. market, and that other complementary acquisition opportunities will be sought as part of Pavilion's strategy to grow its presence and capabilities in this important market.

It is anticipated that both Stratford and Brockhouse Cooper will begin operating under the Pavilion brand and banner in the latter part of 2012. 

About Pavilion Financial Corporation

Pavilion Financial Corporation is a market-leading, global financial services firm offering innovative services and solutions to institutional and high-net-worth investors in select geographical markets.  Headquartered in Winnipeg, Canada, Pavilion and its subsidiaries offer a comprehensive suite of integrated services such as investment consulting, implemented consulting, transition management, securities trading, research and wealth management.  Together with its subsidiaries, Pavilion has offices in key centres including Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Chicago, Boston, Johannesburg, and Capetown.

About Stratford Advisory Group

Founded in 1982, Stratford Advisory Group, Inc. is an independent, full-service investment consulting and advisory firm, registered as an investment advisor with the SEC.  Stratford provides investment consulting to institutional clients including endowments, foundations, healthcare organizations, defined benefit and defined contribution plans.  Services include investment policy development, asset allocation strategy, investment manager structure, manager selection, performance measurement and manager evaluation and oversight.   Stratford serves its national client base from its head office located in Chicago, Illinois.

The Next Decade -- reviewed by Remi Maloney

The Next Decade, by George Friedman, Doubleday, 2011, 272 pp., $20.00

STRATFOR owner and CEO George Friedman takes on the ambitious task of projecting what will happen in the next decade. You might wonder how Friedman’s hypotheses are any better than the Financial Times astrology page. The answer lies in a wisdom too often ignored by many political commentators: to know where you will go, you have to understand where you are and how you got there.

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Brockhouse Cooper Trading Costs Remain Among Lowest in Industry

Trading costs at Brockhouse & Cooper Inc. (Brockhouse Cooper), an agency-only, 24-hour, global equity brokerage firm, are substantially lower than other brokers, according to the latest Transaction Costs Analysis survey conducted by Elkins/McSherry for Institutional Investor.

Looking at more than 24 million trades by 1,900 brokerages, Elkins/McSherry found that, against arrival price, Brockhouse Cooper’s performance was 33.1 basis points better than the average results for brokers trading global equities. This performance ranked Brockhouse Cooper No. 2 among brokers trading global equities. Read the news release here.

Brockhouse Cooper trading costs remain among lowest in industry

Montreal, November 15, 2011– Trading costs at Brockhouse & Cooper Inc. (Brockhouse Cooper), an agency-only, 24-hour, global equity brokerage firm, are substantially lower than other brokers, according to the latest Transaction Costs Analysis survey conducted by Elkins/McSherry for Institutional Investor.

Looking at more than 24 million trades by 1,900 brokerages, Elkins/McSherry found that, against arrival price, Brockhouse Cooper’s performance was 33.1 basis points better than the average results for brokers trading global equities.  This performance ranked Brockhouse Cooper No. 2 among brokers trading global equities.  

“In an increasing automated industry, we’ve focused on keeping implementation costs low, without compromising service,” said Jamie Ritchie, Director, Capital Markets Trading.  “We’re pleased our efforts have been recognized and will continue this focus while at the same time offering our traders’ skills and expertise to our clients.” 

Brockhouse Cooper ranked 13^th among brokers trading U.S. equities, against arrival price. 

According to Mario Choueiri, Director of Brockhouse Cooper’s transition management team, best-execution trading is key to delivering value to clients who are transitioning their portfolios.  “With this repeated and impressive ranking on transaction costs, we can be confident that our transition clients are getting very good results.”

The latest Transaction Costs Analysis survey is published in the November issue of Institutional Investor.  

Headquartered in Montreal, Brockhouse Cooper is a premium boutique firm offering integrated financial services, including investment consulting, transition management and securities trading. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pavilion Financial Corporation, a global financial services firm offering innovative products and solutions to institutional and high-net-worth investors in select geographical markets.  Member CIPF and Member SIPC.

The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers - reviewed by James McKeough

The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, by Richard McGregor, Harper Collins; 1St Edition, 320 pp., 2010, $27.99

Written by Richard McGregor, a Beijing-based, Financial Times corre­spondent for the last decade, The Party provides a sound frame­work for understanding what’s been called China’s ‘operating system’: the Communist Party of China, or CPC.

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Keynes: the return of the Master - reviewed by Alex Bellefleur

Keynes: the Return of the Master, by Robert Skidelsky, Penguin Books 2010, 227 pp., $26.95

After many years in the intellectual wilderness, Keynes is back - and back in a big way. His ideas are now in vogue in political circles that, in the past, would not have paid much attention to his economic policy recommendations.

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A constant volatility framework for managing tail risk

A novel approach to managing tail risk

By:
Alexandre Hocquard, Phd, Portfolio Manager
Sunny Ng, Director, Alternatives Research
Nicolas Papageorgiou, PhD, Director Quantitative Research and Associate Professor, HEC Montreal

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Constant Volatility Research wins National Alternatives Award

Montreal, April 19, 2011 – Brockhouse Cooper Asset Management’s White Paper:  A Constant Volatility Framework for Managing Tail Risk has been awarded the 2010 AIMA Canada- Hillsdale Research Award (ACHRA).

Authored by Dr. Alexandre Hocquard, Portfolio Manager; Sunny Ng, Director Alternative Strategies and Dr. Nicolas Papageorgiou, Director Quantitative Research and Associate Professor at HEC Montreal, the paper presents a novel approach to managing tail risk.

 “We are honored to have our research chosen for this prestigious award,” said Mr. Ng.  “We believe our innovative risk management strategy, which is rooted in academia, presents our clients with a practical and cost effective approach to managing tail risk.”

The authors’ research shows that the failure of strategic asset allocation as the sole risk management tool can largely be attributed to the fact that volatility is not stable over time, and historical correlations between asset classes tend to break down during periods of market stress.  Conventional tail-risk hedging techniques such as the use of options, swaps, and other insurance instruments can be costly and implicitly create a drag on portfolio performance.  In response, the authors demonstrate that investors can better manage tail risk and improve risk-adjusted returns by seeking to maintain a constant level of volatility. Their approach uses futures contracts to dynamically adjust the portfolio's exposure in response to changes in the prevailing level of market volatility. 

A summary of the paper will be published in the Canadian Investment Review.  Read the full text here.

The ACHRA prize, now in its sixth year, is given annually to academics, students or practitioners in Canada who conduct proprietary research pertaining to any aspect of alternative investments.  The winning submission is determined by an independent adjudication panel chaired by Paul Bates, Dean of the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University.  The panel consists of leading academic faculty from business schools across Canada. 

Brockhouse Cooper Asset Management (BCAM) provides an open-architecture, fully customizable asset management service for institutional and private investors.  In addition to select traditional investment strategies, BCAM creates tailored investment solutions and products designed to meet the specific requirements of clients. BCAM is a division of Pavilion Asset Management Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pavilion Financial Corporation, a global financial services firm with offices in Canada, the UK and Israel.

Constant Volatility Research wins National Alternatives Award

Brockhouse Cooper Asset Management’s White Paper: A Constant Volatility Framework for Managing Tail Risk has been awarded the 2010 AIMA Canada- Hillsdale Research Award (ACHRA).

Authored by Dr. Alexandre Hocquard, Portfolio Manager, and Dr. Nicolas Papageorgiou, Director Quantitative Research and Associate Professor at HEC Montreal, the paper presents a novel approach to managing tail risk.  Read the white paper here.

The Big Short -- reviewed by Marie-Michelle Dumas

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday machine, by Michael Lewis, W. W. Norton & Company; 1St Edition edition, 266 pp., 2010, $27.95

The Big Short is not just another book about the recent financial crisis. Rather, it’s a finely written story about the misjudgements, missed signals and ill-fated decisions that led to it.

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Brockhouse Cooper Selected by New Covenant Funds to Provide Temporary Asset Management Solution

Montreal, February 2, 2011 – Brockhouse & Cooper International, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Montreal-based Brockhouse & Cooper Inc.(Brockhouse Cooper), has been selected to manage the core equity allocation of the New Covenant Growth Fund (NYSE:NCGFX).

The firm will provide its temporary asset management solution, giving the New Covenant Growth Fund domestic equity exposure while its advisor evaluates the overall asset allocation of fund. The solution will employ an optimization strategy which seeks to closely track risk characteristics and performance of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index while also screening for stocks that meet New Covenant’s criteria for socially responsible investment.

“New Covenant is a client of long-standing and a valued business partner. We are pleased to work with them on this mandate,” said Patrick Belland, President of Brockhouse Cooper.

In a recent news release, Paul H. Stropkay, the Chief Investment Officer of One Compass Advisors, the investment adviser to New Covenant Funds, said the temporary asset management solution will assist the fund in maintaining “a core allocation to a diversified portfolio of large cap domestic equities that is expected to closely track the broad market. We are confident in Brockhouse Cooper’s ability and experience managing these types of portfolios.”

Based in Jeffersonville, Indiana, New Covenant Funds is a family of faith-based mutual funds sponsored by the Presbyterian Foundation.

Brockhouse & Cooper Inc. is a premium boutique firm offering integrated financial solutions, including investment consulting and management, transition management and securities trading to institutional clients, specialized investors, and investment managers. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pavilion Investment House Ltd., a global financial services firm with offices in Canada, the UK and Israel.

Brockhouse Cooper improves ranking in 2010 Institutional Investor

In a 2010 survey of over 200 global trading firms, Elkins McSherry ranked Brockhouse Cooper on arrival price as No. 2 in U.s. trading and No. 3 in global trading. The firm was ranked No. 9 on VWAP.

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Brockhouse Cooper makes top five ranking of global traders

Montreal, November 11, 2010 – In an analysis of global trading costs from approximately 200 brokers worldwide, Elkins McSherry has pegged Brockhouse & Cooper Inc. at No. 2 in U.S. trading and No. 3 in global trading.  Against arrival price, the firm’s performance was 24.45 basis points better than the average results for brokers trading U.S. equities, and 27.23 basis points better than the average results for brokers trading global equities.

“We’re very pleased with our rankings as we are constantly searching for ways to deliver better value to our clients,” said Jamie Ritchie, Director, Capital Markets Trading, noting that the company has ranked in the top
10 for the last two years.    “We attribute our performance to our continued focus on minimizing implicit and explicit transaction costs for our customers.  In using our services, investment managers can demonstrate at all times that they are allocating their client’s commission dollars wisely”.

The results of Elkins McSherry’s 14th annual survey of global trading costs are published in the November issue of Institutional Investor.   The firm also ranked in the top 10 among global traders on volume weighted average price (VWAP).

Brockhouse & Cooper Inc. has provided institutional clients with global, agency-only brokerage for over 40 years. The trading team operates a centralized, 24-hour trading desk with trading volumes in excess of CDN$50 billion annually.   The trading team also supports the firm’s award-winning transition management service.

“To be once again highly ranked among the elite trading firms in the world is a major accomplishment for us,” said Eric Bolduc, Director, Transition Management.  “Delivering best-execution in transition management is a key part of managing our client’s implicit costs.  Our ability to leverage these strong trading capabilities should continue to translate into very good results for our clients.”

Headquartered in Montreal, Brockhouse & Cooper Inc. is a premium boutique firm offering integrated financial services, including investment consulting and management, transition management and securities trading.  Brockhouse Cooper is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pavilion Investment House Ltd., a global financial services firm with offices in key centres around the globe including Canada, the UK and Israel.      

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Pierre Lapointe, Global Macro Strategist, on BNN’s Trading Day

Pierre Lapointe, Global Macro Strategist, on BNN’s Trading Day

Review by John Shingler: From Higher Aims to Hired Hands

Rakesh Khurana, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 531pp., 2007. 

Until the late 19th century, and even beyond, training for commerce was by way of apprenticeship, informal rather than formal, and it started often enough in the early teen years. During the 20th century this approach was abandoned and replaced, not just by formal, compulsory, general education, but by a specifically business education all the way to, and including, a doctoral degree. What happened?

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BC Universes

Brockhouse Cooper's summary of investment manager performance, published quarterly.

See the latest issues:
Universes 2010 - Q3 Canadian (PDF)
Universes 2010 - Q3 USA (PDF)

Brockhouse Cooper unveils new brand

For over 40 years, Brockhouse Cooper has been one of the country’s most respected financial services firms. From a brand perspective, however, we faced a daunting challenge: how to transform our image to a more sophisticated, independent and global company. With that challenge in mind, we engaged brand consultants, Clark+Huot, to re-imagine the brand in the context of a global player.

Read more in Insights 2010-Q1 (PDF)

Review by John Shingler: The Age of Wonder

Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, London, Harper Press, 2008. pp., xxi, 554.

What an extraordinarily beautiful book this is, filled with insights and information, pulsating with energy and charged with hope for humanity. It is, above all, a profoundly optimistic book. It revels in the accomplishments of the past and celebrates human ingenuity and creativity. Holmes appears to have read everything related to his subject: original texts, unpublished sources and the massive secondary literature. This is a magisterial work which belongs on the shelf of all of those who want to understand the foundations of the modern world, above all the scientific achievements, and dangers, of the past two centuries. It can be read and reread with increasing pleasure and an expanded understanding of the giants on whose shoulders we stand.

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Pierre Lapointe hired as Global Macro Strategist

As published in Insights 2010-Q1

Brockhouse Cooper has hired seasoned financial market analyst, Pierre Lapointe, as its new Global Macro Strategist. Pierre will work as part of the firm’s Capital Markets division, developing specialized research to support investment managers and generate ideas to increase investment returns. He will develop a multi- faceted approach to strategy including top-down (macroeconomic) and bottom up analyses with quantitative models. Currently, Brockhouse Cooper operates a centralized, 24-hour trading desk, providing best price and best execution services to hundreds of institutional clients around the world. Securities volumes are in excess of $50 billion annually, mostly in equities with some fixed income and foreign exchange.

Brockhouse Cooper President Howard Messias said Mr. Lapointe’s demonstrated expertise in financial market analysis will complement the firm’s service offering to clients. “Pierre’s position will involve conducting extensive and global market research and analysis, the output of which we hope to share with clients, adding significant value to their business,” said Mr. Messias.

Mr. Lapointe joined Brockhouse Cooper from National Bank Financial, where he was Market Strategist & Quantitative Analyst for seven years. He is also an accomplished public spokesperson, having provided extensive commentary on activity and trends in financial markets to several English and French-language media outlets.

The secondary market Opportunity knocking or knocked down?

By Sunny Ng, Head of Research – Alternatives, Brockhouse Cooper

Coming on the back of the financial crisis, 2009 appears to have been the year of realized opportunities for some and missed opportunities for many. Over the course of the year, we saw corporate bond spreads widen out then compress dramatically, global equities dip to 10‐year lows then post strong returns across all major markets, commodity prices collapse then rebound sharply. The list goes on.

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Transition management roundtable

Institutions primarily use transition managers to minimize costs and risks when changing investment managers. And in 2009, transition activity is on the rise.

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Evolution of investment structures : what we’ve learned

By Eric Fontaine, FSA, FCIA, CFA, Executive Vice President, Advisory Services

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Elkins McSherry puts Brockhouse Cooper trading in Top-10

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Top-10 Ranking by Institutional Investor

Brockhouse Cooper received a top-10 ranking by Institutional Investor and Elkins McSherry 2009 survey on both volume weighted average price (VWAP) and arrival price.

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Review by John Shingler: The Ascent of Money

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, by Niall Ferguson. NY. Penguin Press, 2008. 442 pp. $29.95.

The title of The Ascent of Money, we should note, is a deliberate reference to the famed television series, The Ascent of Man, written and narrated by the late Jacob Bronowski.  In that work Bronowski addressed the place of human beings, and their evolution, in the framework of natural history.  Bronowski’s series on human beings had a substantial influence on the young Ferguson, who is trying in The Ascent to do the same thing for money, that highly contested and much debated human invention and artefact that Bronowski did for the original inventors, human beings.  I would claim that Ferguson succeeds.

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Ranked Best In Class by PLANSPONSOR

Brockhouse Cooper was ranked Best in Class by non-U.S. clients in all categories of PLANSPONSOR’s 2009 Transition Management Survey based on pre-trade, execution, post-trade, organization and support.

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Review by John Shingler: Lords of Finance

Liaquat Ahamed. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, New York. Penguin Press, 2008. 564 pp. $32.95.

The key to understanding Ahamed’s excellent book is to recognize that its leitmotiv is that history is best seen as a succession of decisions taken by leading actors; it is not a process subject to impersonal forces that impel individuals and groups ineluctably in one direction or another. The essence of this world view is captured in the epigraph to Lords of Finance, “Read no history – nothing but biography, for that is life without theory”, a provocative aphorism taken from Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Contarini Fleming.   I think many people, however much they may claim to subscribe to some theory, whether it be dialectical materialism or the efficient market hypothesis, in practice basically agree with Ahamed’s proposition that leadership does indeed matter.  Why else the fierce competition for office and for control of governments or corporate bodies or political parties?

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Review by John Shingler: Billions of Entrepreneurs

Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours, by Tarun Khanna, Boston, Harvard Business School Press, 353 pp., 2007, $29.95

Tarun Khanna compares China’s and India’s separate pasts and their dissimilar passages to modernity, and then explores the world that they are both directing and making.  I am filled with admiration for Khanna’s energy, enthusiasm and entrepreneurship.  Indeed, his work, Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures – And Yours, is in an instance of his topic; Tarun Khanna himself is an example of what he is writing about.

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First In The UK

Brockhouse Cooper became the first-ever, non-UK domiciled member of the London Stock Exchange.

Read the case study prepared by the London Stock Exchange (PDF