Michael Grondin: From third-gen entrepreneur to family office CEO

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Michael Grondin’s morning conversation with Canadian Family Offices takes place hours before an important milestone: A workshop with all Samara employees, including the 15-member team from CEOS Family Office that officially joined Grondin’s three-year-old multi-family office in 2023.

While the integration of CEOS enhanced Samara’s accounting and administrative concierge services, he says, combining the two Montreal firms has called for a refreshed approach covering the firm’s core values. The first is “We deeply care,” a reflection of a belief that wealth goes beyond money, says Grondin, who is Samara’s president and CEO.

Grondin spent more than two decades as a portfolio manager at financial institutions including RBC Wealth Management, where he led an Executive and Chairman Council for more than 12 years, and at Merrill Lynch, where he created his own wealth management team at the tender age of 26.

“I’m a third-generation entrepreneur, and all our partners and stakeholders are or have been entrepreneurs. So we can all relate to the importance of helping other entrepreneurial families prosper while using their wealth to leave a legacy and make a meaningful difference in our society.”

As Grondin’s conversation with Canadian Family Offices unfolds — “this is great practice for the workshop!” he exclaims, laughing — he unpacks Samara’s other two core values and how they help to ensure family continuity across generations.

Tell us about your journey in wealth management. How did you get to where you are today?

My father and his older brother sold their family business in 1997. I was 23 years old at the time, attending my last finance-degree semester and working part-time in the company, so when they sold I learned a lot about private wealth management and became interested in the field.

So I started as a portfolio manager and was fortunate to have several very successful entrepreneurs as clients. We evolved with their business needs, but as the years went by it became increasingly clear that they needed more than the products and services offered by banks. That’s why we started Samara. We make a difference (the company’s second core value) by helping our clients prepare their children to manage family assets wisely, and to support individual and shared values and aspirations.

How does the process of supporting family continuity unfold at Samara?

I was fortunate to read a great book called Build Your Family Bank by Emily Griffiths-Hamilton.

Seventy per cent of succession plans fail, and the book rightly blames that failure on overlooking the human elements of a family. Most families focus too much on the “roof” of their bank, which is the shelter offered by well-managed wealth. But a solid foundation of shared family vision and values is much more important to succession plans than financial acumen.

That’s why one of Samara’s top priorities is making sure we have the right discussions with our families and ask the right questions. That way, we develop a detailed continuity plan that describes how they want to incorporate wellness, education and philanthropy into their lives, while promoting shared values and harmony through initiatives and activities like establishing a family council, holding investment education days, and organizing wellness events and family retreats.

What kind of assets or investments can clients access through Samara that they wouldn’t be able to access so easily on their own or through another firm?

Samara isn’t affiliated with any financial institution, which gives us the ability to provide an open investment architecture. As partners, Walter Global Asset Management and W Investments support our private equity services with complementary expertise in investment and business management.

We’re always open to new ideas and new opportunities that arise in the market. These days, for instance, we’re more focused on secondary private equities, private debt and multi-residential real estate.

Our investment approach is to build resilient portfolios while being opportunistic in the market. We use proprietary modelling tools to stress-test various scenarios to assess risks and capitalize on market opportunities. Our investment team analyzes and selects from among the best specialized managers in the world, and we offer our clients investment opportunities to which they would not otherwise have access.

Many of your clients are entrepreneurs who are used to running the show. What kind of shift needs to happen on their side to ensure they can achieve their financial goals?

It’s true that delegating to family office professionals can be challenging for some clients. But ours realize over time that managing family wealth is different from managing a business. That’s why we partner with them to show how building the infrastructure for financial success and family continuity leads to success on both fronts.

At the same time, our proprietary reporting platform puts a great deal of control in their hands if need be. It provides consolidated net worth analyses, cash flow projections and performance reporting that helps them understand their cash commitments and potential investment outcomes, and allows them to manage liquidity needs, resulting in greater financial flexibility and better returns.

When you think about all the wealthy families you’ve worked with, what are the common themes among those who have done it right from a financial perspective?

We’ve taken on clients in their 30s and 40s who have a lot to learn when it comes to replicating the success of their business in their investment portfolio. That’s where our older and more experienced partners and stakeholders provide a big advantage. These are low-profile conservative investors who have built success on informed decision-making, which is something we don’t always see with our younger investors.

Thankfully the younger generation is eager to learn — we’ve more than doubled our team size and assets under management since 2021 — and our team is always ready to exceed expectations (Samara’s third core value) when it comes to sharing their experience and expertise.

What are some of the biggest opportunities for multi-family offices today?

With 70 per cent of Canada’s wealth management market controlled by banks, there is tremendous opportunity for boutique firms to provide more sophisticated investment strategies, personalized services, and solutions for complex family situations.

I just met with a young family that is about to sell their business for a few hundred million dollars, and they’ve simply outgrown their bank advisor. Banks are very well run and well suited for clients with net worths of up to $20 million, but anything above that generally calls for the specialized services of a multi-family office.

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

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