Wellington west Capital Inc. is aiming to become “the biggest non-bank player in Canada,” says CEO Charlie Spiring. And the company has taken significant steps toward that goal with its acquisition of Clearsight Wealth Management Inc. and its decision to take about 20% of Wellington West public.

The Winnipeg-based financial services firm — which was founded by Spiring in 1993 and now has 28 offices across the country, 98 advisors and $7.4 billion in assets under administration — is aiming to double its AUA, open another dozen offices and add 80 advisors by the end of 2008, Spiring says. As well, the company plans an initial public offering in about two years, which is intended to drive growth on both sides of the border.

Toronto-based Clearsight is a three-year-old full-service brokerage with $100 million in AUA and affinity programs with alumni associations at 15 universities in Ontario and British Columbia. Although Clearsight is small by Wellington West standards, it is Clearsight’s marketing program to Canada’s best, brightest and many of its highest paid that attracted Spiring and persuaded him to pursue the deal. The affinity programs enable Clearsight to market its services through direct mail, alumni newspapers and magazines, and online to more than 1.5 million graduates.

Alumni, as well as friends and faculty, who respond to Clearsight’s marketing efforts are quickly put in contact with an advisor who has already been provided a snapshot of their financial situation. If the relationship is consummated, the program pays a fee to the university.

“We believe this is, at a minimum, a $1-billion opportunity for Wellington West in the next couple of years,” Spiring says. “It will make every one of our brokers who participate in the program better. The lead generation and branding opportunities that arise from acquiring Clearsight are “ginormous.”

The purchase price of the deal wasn’t disclosed, but Spiring says it was “several million dollars.

“Wellington West competes with the banks, which have years of history and well-recognized brands,” he adds. “We’re trying to establish our brand in the mid- to high net-worth sector of Canada and to break in without spending millions of dollars in advertising.

“The university communicates with the graduates on our behalf,” he says, allowing Clearsight and Wellington West to leverage off a graduate’s relationship with his or her alma mater. Wellington West’s asset-management division will build products and create services specifically for alumni.

Wellington West’s goals aren’t quite as ambitious south of the border, where, Spiring says, the company hopes to build on its one acquisition — Los Angeles-based One Capital Management LLC, an investment-counselling firm with US$450 million in assets under management — and become a “niche player.”

Spiring notes that only a handful of large financial services companies in Canada and the U.S. have remained private, most notably Boston-based Fidelity Investments. Others, such as Canaccord Capital Inc. , have become much stronger since going public.

“Its brand is better recognized, people have joined the firm and it has a little more credibility than before,” Spiring says of Canaccord. “Now, it’s truly transparent. It’s easy to knock a private firm because it doesn’t have public numbers.”

As part of Wellington West’s readiness to go public, the company is about to release an annual report. “We’re prepared to be transparent and open and be a public company in training,” Spiring says.

Meanwhile, its eight-person board will take some time to decide what kind of structure its public offering will take. If the market is paying a big premium for income trusts, Wellington West will go that route.

Spiring would like to continue growing organically by attracting experienced brokers who are discontented at their current firms. He’d also like to take current talks on both sides of the border to fruition and make more acquisitions.

Wellington West won’t rush into setting an IPO date just yet, says Spiring, adding that its growth targets have to be achieved and the market conditions need to be right. “We need all those stars to line up before we pick a date,” he says.

The company’s board also has determined 35 tasks that need to be completed before the IPO can become a reality. Among them are repatriating its 9% ownership stake from Crocus Investment Fund (which was completed last month for $5 million-$10 million), creating a board that is Toronto Stock Exchange-compliant and completing the Clearsight acquisition.

@page_break@Dave Finley, Clearsight’s president and CEO, says he started looking for a strategic partner in January because his firm’s brokers in its three offices simply didn’t have the manpower to service the amount of business it had rolling in from university alumni.

Finley says it wasn’t feasible from either a cost or time perspective for Clearsight to build a sizable team on its own: “We were growing our affinity business so quickly we couldn’t keep up on the brokerage side. We didn’t have enough scale.”

Scale won’t be a problem now, considering Wellington West’s national distribution network. It plans to expand to Alberta before the end of this year, to Manitoba and Saskatchewan in 2007 and then into Atlantic Canada.

Meanwhile, the Clearsight name will not disappear from the retail landscape. Because of its successful track record in the alumni channel, the two companies have christened the Wellington West Clearsight Investment Program. Finley is staying on as its president. IE