Vancouver entrepreneur Peter Brown is a mining finance titan who founded Canarim, the predecessor to Canaccord Genuity (CF-T).
Canaccord's having its troubles now as the mining bear market grinds on. The stock is trading below $4 -- it was above $9 in May 2014 when Brown resigned as a director and officer of the company he had built from a tiny brokerage in 1968.
When time's were good, Brown was a king on Howe Street.
And there were some really, really good times during the boom years -- Brown once rode into a company Christmas party on the back of an elephant.
The former chairman of the Vancouver Stock Exchange made a fortune along the way, and has world-class collections of art (Group of Seven) and memorabilia to show for it. He's a history buff who owns diaries written by legendary explorers including Capt. George Vancouver and Capt. James Cook.
Brown and his wife have also donated generously to a wide variety of charities through the Peter and Joanne Brown Foundation.
But he retains a passion for mining exploration, telling me in a 2011 Vancouver Sun interview that Vancouver is home to the "finest mining explorationists in the world."
Brown recently told Business in Vancouver that he could not have built Canaccord in today's regulatory climate. And in a Report on Business Magazine article by Tim Kiladze published today, Brown sounded off about the level of regulations.
Investors who want to invest in private placements but aren't wealthy enough aren't the only ones getting shafted by excessive rules and regulations, according to this excerpt from the article:
New client “suitability” rules—meant to en-sure mom-and-pop investors don’t get duped—have raised ire, too. Brown says he knows a 76-year-old in Vancouver who made his fortune bringing three mines to production. The man recently asked his broker at a Big Six bank to put $150,000 into a new mining venture. The broker refused, arguing it wasn’t suitable for someone his age—despite the client’s expertise and riches. Regulators, Brown argues, “do not understand the unintended consequences of what they do.” If even wealthy Canadians can’t bet on the next great miners, how will these companies ever raise the early capital needed to grow?
As encouraging as it is to hear of a "new mining venture," clearly there are still major, unnecessary impediments to raising mining exploration capital. It's been well-documented by campaigners such as Don Mosher as well as at the #TSXVTownHall hashtag here at CEO.CA.
Hopefully those impediments will be removed soon. Hearing a business leader with Peter Brown's track record speaking out about it can only help.
Brown's latest insider filing hints at another passion: food. He purchased 8,600 shares of The Keg Royalties Income Fund -- he's a director -- at an average price of $18.21 on Wednesday.
He's also a partner in Umberto Menghi's upscale Giardino restaurant in Vancouver.
