Adam bain may be a
top producer, but sometimes you can catch him in an entirely different venue.

By day, Bain is a vice president and investment advisor with the Bain-Buchanan wealth-management team in the London, Ont., offices of RBC Dominion Securities Inc.

But on certain Friday nights, he can be found in somewhat seedy bars, dressed in short pants, white socks and a wig of long, black, curly hair, holding a Gibson SG guitar.

What is going on here?

Bain, who uses the stage name Angus, is a member of a loud, hard-rock tribute band called RBC/DC. Modelled after the hard-pounding electric shock hits of Australian rockers AC/DC, Bain’s band plays only for charity and only for fun.

At a typical RBC/DC concert, friends and fans alike stand shoulder to shoulder waiting for the band to begin. The crowd looks a little different than the usual Friday night set. Older, better dressed — a business crowd out for the night in pressed blue jeans and expensive leather.

“Good evening,” Bain shouts, beginning the set with a scorching guitar chord as the band sings the first song — usually “Thunderstruck.” The place goes wild. The rest of the night includes screeching and mind-numbing renditions of “Back in Black,” “TNT” and “Shook Me All Night Long” from the band that brought out such discs as High Voltage, Highway to Hell and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.

“All our playing is at fundraisers,” Bain says. “If it’s not for charity, we don’t play.”

RBC/DC plays at a yearly fundraiser for breast cancer research called Rockin’ For the Cure, and also appears at the annual Lon-don, Ont., version of Battle of the Bands, a fundraising gig to support London’s Wellspring Cancer Support Centre. Other regular appearances include the London Lawyers Feed the Hungry campaign and Ribfest, a fundraiser for the city’s Boys and Girls Club.

The band usually plays at least one fundraiser a year in Toronto, and each summer performs at a fundraiser for the Muskoka Regional Cancer Centre. Bain estimates RBC/DC has helped raise more than $500,000 over the years.

“It is really great doing something you love, contributing to a good cause and having fun — all at the same time,” says Bain.

RBC/DC has been together for about six years. The other band members are lawyer David Kirwin on guitar; RBC financial advisor Bruce Fairles on the drums; Ed Kaszuba, a medical practitioner-manager, on bass; and health practitioner John Traut, the singer.

For Bain, life has been about music and managing money for as long as he can remember.

“I always wanted to be in the investment business,” says the 44-year-old University of Windsor graduate who holds both a bachelor of commerce degree and a science degree.

Bain started his first business, a small magazine-publishing company, while still a student at Windsor. He began working full-time at DS in London in 1991.

Today the Bain-Buchanan team is made up of two advisors, three full-time sales and service associates and one part-time marketing associate. Bain has been a vice president of DS and a member of its executive council for almost a decade. His partner, Bob Buchanan, a former Royal Bank of Canada manager, joined DS about seven years ago.

“My focus is more security selection,” Bain says. “Bob’s focus is more on the planning side. We work together on the macro investment strategy, and we both wear asset-gathering and servicing hats. It is a nice mix because we tailor the servicing to those clients who suit us best. We let clients choose their service plan, regardless of account size. We do have minimum account size requirements, but, for us, it’s more a matter of how well we feel clients fit with our way of doing business. We want clients for life.”

Bain got his first guitar in Grade 4 and played at a variety of parties and school events. One of his high-school bands, The Dead Puppies, raised money for the school’s football team. Another band, Margin Call, formed when he first got into the investment business, also raised money for good causes.

“We were a basement band, a garage band, just a few guys playing around and having fun,” says Bain, now the father of three girls age six and under.

What do clients think of Bain when he is on stage belting out guitar chords and playing the role of hard rocker Angus?

@page_break@Bain admits a few were surprised at first, but only one called him directly to voice his concerns after “Angus’s” picture appeared in the local newspaper. “Did you get your hair cut before our meeting this week?” the client asked. When Bain explained it was a wig and that the band played for charities and fun, the client’s concerns melted away.

At most shows, Bain’s clients are sprinkled through the crowd. Many like that Bain is involved in his community — he also sits as the vice chairman of the Boys and Girls Club Foundation Board. And clients like to see there is another side to the analytical, model-driven stock-picker.

Bain is also the advisor for the Harris Investment Club, formed in 1999 with a number of London businessmen. He handles investments for the club, which meets four times a year, is limited to 30 members (including this writer) and cannot contain more than one individual from the same profession.

“Adam is a great investment advisor and a pretty good guitar player,” says Cec Shewchuk, president and CEO of Calgary-based software company Decision Dynamics Technology Ltd. and a member of the Harris Investment Club executive who commutes between Calgary and London. “People in the club respect Adam’s abilities as a financial advisor, and the results are excellent. We are all impressed that he does these kinds of shows with his band to help people in the London community.”

When Bain is not playing or practising (the band plays about seven gigs a year and practises once a month), he spends a lot of his time refining the team’s quantitative stock and asset-allocation models.

“I have always had an interest in and read a lot about investment modelling,” says Bain. “One of my favourite books is Jim O’Shaughnessy’s What Works on Wall Street. This book highlights the results of a number of very simple market-beating strategies. The beauty of the book is its simplicity. At times, I have a tendency to complicate things. And this book reminds me that ‘complicated’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘better’.”

About a dozen years ago, Bain began working with a doctoral student at the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario to verify data in an article on stock selection written in part by Ivey professor Stephen Foerster. The article, published in the Canadian Investment Review, outlined how the model beat the market 90% of the time and by “very wide margins.” Bain attended Foerster’s honours business administration, master’s of business administration and executive MBA classes to debate and discuss the findings, which led eventually to an Ivey business case — Adam Bain and the Price Momentum Strategy — that is still used by the university.

“Something I learned from the class experience was how the sentiment and direction of the questions — especially from the EMBA class, who had more investment exposure — were driven by the short-term ups and downs of the market and the model itself,” Bain says. “If the markets had been particularly bad around class time, there would be much doubt cast on the continued success of the strategy; if the markets had been good, they all wanted in now!” IE