Charlie sims thought his homecoming would land him back in Canada in time for the 2005 National Hockey League playoffs. But with the season cancelled, Sims will have to get his competitive fix from the Canadian mutual fund industry.
“I confess,” says Sims, 44, the newly appointed president and CEO of Toronto-based Mackenzie Financial Corp., raising his hand momentarily, “I’m a team-sports fan. Avid. Team sports have meant a lot to me and that’s reflected in the way I think of people coming together to put a strategy in place.”
Sims was formerly a franchise player for another team. He spent more than 15 years with Franklin Templeton Investments Corp. — seven of them with the parent company, San Mateo, Calif.-based Franklin Resources Inc., as part of Canada’s brain drain.
“It’s an opportunity to come home,” says Sims of his move to Mackenzie. “It is also an opportunity for me to join the team, come back and bring some of the experience I’ve garnered outside of Canada into the marketplace. And I guess part of my character and nature is to look for new experiences and challenges.”
A lot has changed since Sims, who was born and raised in Toronto and attended Upper Canada College, left town in 1997. Discount brokerages and fee-based planning were oddities and two years of irrational industry exuberance were just starting.
Sims acknowledges it’s a much more competitive marketplace now, with many mergers done — including the takeover of Mackenzie by IGM Financial Inc. It’s a move, he says, that only makes Mackenzie stronger, providing the financial support to outmaneuvre and develop new products and services.
Two things haven’t changed since he left, Sims says: Mackenzie’s place atop the fund scene in Canada and his deep belief in the value of the full-service advisor and financial planning as a practice. Only a few weeks on the job, Sims isn’t ready to divulge any product or strategic moves for Mackenzie, except to say that they will always involve consultation with the distribution network.
As Franklin’s chief administrative officer in charge of global distribution, a position he took over in 2002 and one of many titles he held at his former employer, Sims delved into the “nitty-gritty” of realizing business opportunities, executing strategy and monitoring results.
For example, Sims oversaw the firm’s first steps into China. The Chinese government — which wants products to fund its pension funds and help its aging population retire with some wealth — is warming up to foreign investment firms. Working with the co-CEO, Sims’ team struck up a joint venture with a Chinese investment firm and put management in place to get things rolling in China. Sims says the experience made him realize how much talent has developed in the North American distribution channels over the years.
“The need for advice in that country is big, and that, to me, will push the opportunity in China for 10 years,” says Sims. “It will take that time for the infrastructure to be built, for the population to be educated and for financial planning firms to be created and brokers to evolve their model into one that services mutual fund investment.”
Sims says the Chinese government supports the development of its capital markets, with everything that entails. It’s encouraging professional investment management and active research in its domestic market. “Hopefully, that process develops good corporate governance locally,” he adds.
Sims, who received his chartered accountant designation in 1987, says his global outlook is one of the strengths he brings to Mackenzie. Before the executive administrative role, he was Franklin’s chief financial officer globally, “filing reports in many different countries, in many different cultures and languages. It was very challenging, from a career and operational perspective,” he says.
As a result, Sims has more of a global perspective on the business. “I focus more on global best practices rather than country-specific ones,” he says. “When I think about strategy, or when I’m working with a team, those are the questions I put on the table: ‘Where is it done? Who does it best? Not only in Canada but around the world.’”
That’s the standard he wants to bring to Mackenzie, Sims says.
His training as a CA has stuck with him, he says, particularly his work in the mid-1980s with the business investigations unit at Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP). He learned from businesses that made mistakes in how they were challenged, always with an eye to understanding how things could have been done differently. “I come from a medical family,” says Sims, who received a BA in finance from the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ont. “The dinner chat was not related to business at all, so I felt it was a great training ground — to get in and see how to operate a business from the financial side.”