Charlie spiring has turned to a former competitor to lead the growth of his company as it moves toward an initial public offering.

The CEO of Winnipeg-based Wellington West Holdings Inc. , the newly minted parent of Wellington West Capital Inc. , has hired Kish Kapoor, long-time right-hand man of Marty Weinberg, who founded Assante Corp. and Loring Ward International Ltd. , as president. His mandate is to double the size of the firm.

“Our goal is to step things up and build the firm to the next level,” Spiring says. “Kish brings a lot of talent on the mergers and acquisitions side. We’re going to speed up this part of our business, both in frequency and size of the deals.”

Spiring’s goal is to grow the company to $15 billion in assets under administration within two years and more than 200 advisors within three years. It currently has 100 advisors in 28 offices and $7.6 billion in AUA.

“If we get lucky on an acquisition, we could get to 250 or 300 advisors,” he says.

Under Kapoor’s stewardship, then-Winnipeg-based Assante made 26 acquisitions, including eight in the U.S. It built up a stable of more than 1,500 financial advisors and its AUA grew exponentially from $200 million to more than $20 billion, including $9 billion in its proprietary product. Assante moved its headquarters to Toronto when it was sold to CI Fund Management Inc. in 2003 for $846 million.

Spiring says Kapoor will bring an “Assante flavour” to Wellington West. “Assante was awfully good at acquisitions,” says Spiring. “We’re going to have Kish find similar ones and see if they fit our business model.”

For his part, Kapoor says, he’s looking forward to leveraging his experience at Assante to grow Wellington West into an even bigger player on the national stage. “We’re going to take a clear look and define the strategy the firm needs to adopt, what we can do to enhance the current corporate strategy, then execute against it,” he says.

Kapoor decided to end his self-imposed break of more than a year from the business — during which he visited his parents in Africa — with Wellington West. He felt it provided the best platform for his return. Kapoor says just because he and Weinberg don’t have offices down the hall from each other doesn’t mean they won’t work together again. They talk on the phone almost every day.

BRILLIANT STRATEGIST

“Weinberg’s busy executing a strategy on the private-equity side and wasn’t ready on the distribution side,” says Kapoor. “This opportunity came up for me, and it made sense. Someday, Marty and I will do business again. It’s a question of us executing two different things at the same time.”

Weinberg, president of Canterbury Park Capital LP, a 15-month-old private-equity firm based in Winnipeg, says Spiring is a “lucky man” to have Kapoor on board.

“Kish is brilliant at a lot of things, including strategy and advisor recruiting,” Weinberg says. “He’s a good fit for Wellington West. It is in the business of retail distribution of financial products, and he’s been there before. He helped build something from scratch at one of the largest firms in the country providing independent financial advice.”

Weinberg continues to develop Canterbury Park, as well as some other as yet unannounced financial services initiatives.

“We hope to be in a position to unfold our plan in the first quarter of 2007,” he says.

When news leaked out in November that Wellington West wants to make an IPO of up to 20% of the company within two years, Spiring heard from “a lot of people interested in joining Wellington West in the sweet spot of the cycle,” he says.

The new parent company was formed when Wellington West bought back its 9% ownership stake from Crocus Investment Fund in September.

Kapoor, who held the title of executive vice president of corporate development at Assante from 1994 to 2003 and at Loring Ward from 2003 to 2005, is a former tax partner at KPMG LLP. He is currently a director of Winnipeg-based telco MTS Allstream and of Medicure Inc., a biopharmaceutical firm, also of Winnipeg.

Kapoor says one of Wellington West’s attractions is working in the Manitoba capital.

“I love Winnipeg; it’s been very good to me,” he says. “The city has a lot of talented people whom we can continue to attract to the firm. There’s a lot of brainpower here. There’s Investors Group Inc. and Great-West Lifeco Inc. That’s good for everybody.”

@page_break@Wellington West Holdings is the parent of Wellington West Financial Services; Wellington West Capital Markets, its equity research and corporate finance division; and Wellington West Pro Ice, a provider of financial consulting services to professional athletes across North America. IE