Employees at CI Financial open the market to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange on June 24.plans to double down on the wealth manager’s acquisition-driven growth strategy of snapping up rival fund managers and financial advisory businesses in Canada and the United States.
Mubadala Capital has US$27-billion in assets, with two-thirds of its capital coming from North American investors such as pension plans, endowments and wealthy families. The remainder of the fund manager’s money comes from parent Mubadala Investment Co., an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund that has US$302-billion in assets.
“We are not entertaining any such discussions,” he said. “We see CI as one investment opportunity. ... Both arms have independently attractive underlying features that we believe in.” Mubadala Capital’s current Canadian holdings include Canada Cartage, the country’s largest trucking company, which it purchased in 2022 from another private equity fund. In the past two years, Canada Cartage made two significant acquisitions, including the takeover of Montreal-based GTI Group, a logistics business with U.S. operations.
The CI acquisition will require foreign investment review approval under the Investment Canada Act as well as U.S. approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. He pointed to the federal government’s ban on use of technology from Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and an order from Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne requiring Chinese companies to divest their holdings in three Canadian critical minerals companies.