Any prospective acquisition would have to be both a good fit and immediately accretive to earnings, the chief executive of Canaccord Financial Inc. said Thursday.

On a conference call with analysts after announcing its latest quarterly results, Paul Reynolds, the firm’s president and CEO, declined to comment on any rumours that Canaccord might be working on a possible deal for Genuity Capital Markets, a boutique investment bank.

Reynolds explained to analysts that any deal the firm looks to do would have to be a “strong cultural and strategic fit,” and that it would have to be immediately accretive to earnings.

While the immediate deal speculation is focused on the capital markets side of the business, Canaccord also said that on the retail side it expects to keep the headcount of investment advisors more or less unchanged. At the end of its fiscal third quarter (Dec. 31, 2009), Canaccord had 327 advisory teams, which is down by seven from the previous quarter.

On the call, Reynolds explained that the firm recruited nine new advisory teams in the quarter, and 16 left the firm, for the net decrease of seven.

The firm is in the midst of what it calls a multi-year effort to upgrade the productivity of its advisory force, in part, by recruiting more productive advisors from other firms, while culling advisors that don’t meet its’ standards. This process is expected to continue but with the goal of leaving the overall size of the sales force essentially flat, Reynolds noted.

IE