How deal making gets done at the Canada Investment Summit, a ‘massive catalyst’ for growth

Early on the first morning of the inaugural Canada Investment Summit, a senior executive at one of the country’s Big Six banks sauntered over to share some advice, informed by his experiences at global conferences such as the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“You don’t even need to watch the panels,” he said in a private conversation. “The lobby is where it’s at.”

In this case, it was the wood-panelled lobby outside the Park Hyatt ballroom in Yorkville, the ritzy Toronto neighbourhood that hosted hundreds of institutional investors this week.

The event that morning was a mini-forum put together by the Milken Institute and its speaker lineup was legitimate, including Jenny Johnson, the CEO of Franklin Templeton Investments, and Jack Neumark, the co-CEO of Fortress Investment Group. But everyone there seemed to be thrilled about getting lost in the sea of navy-blue and grey suits that formed at every break in programming.

Foreign investors optimistic about changing Canadian investment environment

In a way, it was a parable for the entire summit. Technically, the signature event was an all-day conference at the Four Seasons Hotel on Tuesday. But its guest list of foreign investors, Canadian CEOs and politicians was incredibly selective. So, there were spillover events, including a private dinner hosted by TD Bank on Sunday evening and a sushi-and-cocktail reception hosted by Torys LLP on Monday. In total, there were dozens of them, and they served a unique purpose.

In the old days, a billion-dollar deal might get hashed at the bar. In this era, sophisticated investment funds have risk and investment committees that prevent handshake deals from happening (often for good reason). The real draw of a conference like the Investment Summit, then, is bringing together power players and letting them cook.

The institutional investors that Canada hosted this week, including Singapore’s Temasek and Blackstone, a giant U.S. private equity investor, are pitched deals and ideas all the time. The goal of the Investment Summit, which was modelled off similar events in France and Saudi Arabia, wasn’t to inform these intelligent investors that Canada, a G7 country, exists – it was to allow them to break bread with more Canadians in person. If a good relationship is seeded, it could eventually influence them to take something back to their investment committees.

This year, the conference organizers also got some cherries on top, because even though the target audience was foreign investors, it had an influence on many Canadians who attended, fuelling an excitement that verged on giddiness.

List of announcements coming out of the Canada Investment Summit

Read the full transcript of Carney’s speech

It may not have seemed this way from the outside. The Summit looked like a staid event because suits and ties were the dominant outfit. Even at a forum held by the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, which attracts tech investors who are more inclined to treat Patagonia vests as suit jackets, the attire was quite formal – mirroring Prime Minister Mark Carney’s sartorial style.

But the wardrobes were deceiving. There was a palpable pulse in the rooms. Canada has been bullied by the U.S. government for nearly two years, and the Summit dangled the prospect of growth again.

“I really do think the event is a massive catalyst,” said David Lewin, the lead senior partner at Quebec-based Novacap, which invests in Canadian technology companies.

Even though Ottawa’s primary goal is to attract billion-dollar cheques to fund infrastructure investments, he believes there were knock-on effects and that smaller funds can piggyback on the energy. “All the ripple effects around these large announcements will create a lot of opportunity,” Mr. Lewin said.

The Summit also permitted Canadians to do something they hardly ever do: Talk themselves up. Similar to Australia, Canada suffers from Tall Poppy Syndrome. Boasting about success is often seen as distasteful.

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At the Milken Institute forum on Monday, Aidan Gomez, one of the co-founders of Cohere, a homegrown artificial intelligence company that has the potential to compete with American and Chinese rivals, reminded the crowd that the technology behind American companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic came out of Canada.

Mr. Gomez worked with Geoffrey Hinton, a godfather of AI, in Toronto, and he co-authored a 2017 paper that introduced a pivotal concept that allowed AI to rapidly advance.

For a while, he told the crowd, he worked at Google Brain, one of the first research hubs for AI, and early in his time there he overheard colleagues speaking French with Québécois accents. Something clicked for him. “All of this was built by Canadians,” he thought to himself.

American and Chinese companies may dominate the conversation today, he went on to say, but Canada is just as relevant – something many Canadians don’t even know.

“We invented AI,” he boasted.