The McGill Desautels Honours in Investment Management (HIM) program is where tomorrow’s finance leaders are made. With a focus on experiential learning, the program’s students run Desautels Capital Management (DCM), Canada’s first university-owned registered investment management firm.
Launched in 2009, DCM currently manages four funds: three equity funds (large cap) and a fixed-income fund. These funds expose students to quantitative investment strategies including AI strategies and socially responsible investing.
Recently, a generous donation from Mr. J. Sebastian van Berkom, a lifelong philanthropist and leading figure in Montreal’s finance scene, will enable DCM to add a North American small-cap investment fund to its portfolio to further enhance students’ fund management experience.
“This new fund gives students experience in small-cap investing,” says Prof. Vadim di Pietro, Chief Investment Officer at DCM. “It rounds out our offering and really shows Mr. van Berkom’s faith in our students’ abilities.”
Van Berkom established a similar, highly successful small-cap investment management program at Concordia University. He now hopes to replicate this experience at McGill, which he decided to support after his good friend and business associate Jonathan Ross Goodman, MBA’94, pointed out that it was “time to give back.”
“I went to him and said, ‘I don’t understand why you’re not doing this at McGill, which was one of the first investors in your firm (Van Berkom and Associates Inc.)’ says Goodman, a McGill alumnus and longtime loyal donor to the University. “I used moral persuasion to convince him to thank McGill for showing confidence in him when he was first starting out.”
From humble beginnings to global success
Self-taught and self-made, van Berkom moved to Montreal from Holland with his family after the war when he was six years old. Later on, he worked various jobs to put himself through university, from delivering newspapers to working as a lifeguard and swim instructor. After graduating from Concordia University, he secured a job at Bell Canada in the pension fund, where he first discovered his passion for small-cap investing.
“I was looking at the portfolio and I realized we were missing the pazazz, there was nothing exciting” – until he discovered the early established growth companies poised to become the large cap firms of tomorrow. “I think the small-cap space is under-analysed and under-invested. Yes, there’s more risk, but the reward is so much greater than sticking with just one bunch of stocks.”
In 1991, he founded Van Berkom Global Asset Management, which today runs $5 billion in small-cap assets across North America, Asia and Europe. With this success came a desire to give back, which led to him establishing the small-cap initiatives at McGill and elsewhere – initiatives he says are a win-win for everyone.
A shared vision and a launchpad for diverse career paths
The small-cap fund provides students with more options and more opportunities for cross-learning, so they can gain valuable experience in the areas they’re most passionate about, explains Prof. Jiro Kondo, Academic Director of HIM program.
“Above and beyond returns, our mission is to provide a world-class education and experiential learning opportunity that prepares students to soar as high as possible, not just in investment management but in a variety of paths, from entrepreneurship to consulting,” says Prof. Kondo. “And this is something we feel Mr. van Berkom is aligned with us on.”
“I believe the best program for society, for Montreal, for our competitors and for our industry is to generate students who have the advantage of managing real money while they’re studying,” says Mr. van Berkom. Through the Desautels initiative, he also aims to create job opportunities for students, including offering internships at his firm.
Undergraduate students working on the small-cap initiative will also benefit from the support of an advisory committee made up of industry experts, including van Berkom, who will serve as guides and mentors. There will also be a program director, Mr. Benoit Durand, now retired from Van Berkom and Associates Inc., to oversee the initiative and help ensure its success.
A promising program with a positive impact
Prof. Yolande Chan, Dean of the Desautels Faculty of Management, feels grateful for the donation, which not only supports the Faculty but broadens the scope of experiential learning for students and helps set them up for success in whatever financial career path they choose to pursue.
“This initiative gives students the opportunity to deepen their knowledge and explore new areas of interest, supported by some of the top experts in the industry,” she says. “Our students are the financial leaders of the future, and I look forward to seeing the positive impact it has for them, for our faculty, and for the broader community.”