Wellington West Capital Inc. of Winnipeg and Harris Partners Ltd. of Toronto have completed their merger, which was announced last fall.

The transaction closed effective February 8, and has received all appropriate regulatory approvals.

Harris, an institutional equities firm, has been renamed Wellington West Capital Markets Inc. Over the past 10 months, the firm has grown to approximately 20 professionals in equity research, institutional sales and trading, and corporate finance.

The firm says its focus will remain on providing value-added equity research ideas, combined with strong execution in trading and corporate finance in the technology, mining, energy sectors.

“We’ve been looking to add a prominent institutional group to our growing organization for some time now,” said Kevin Kelly, president and co-CEO (title subject to regulatory approval) of Wellington West Capital. “The Harris Partners team, now renamed Wellington West Capital Markets, is joining forces with us because they share our vision of a significant opportunity to build a successful Canadian, employee-owned investment services firm.”

Wellington West Capital Inc. is a full service independent investment dealer with 18 branch offices from coast to coast. It boasts over 39,000 investment accounts, and more than $5.0 billion in assets. The firm executes over $6 billion in securities transactions annually with plans to double those numbers within the next 18 months.