Canadian Family Offices’ Ashley Redmond recently had the opportunity to sit down with Matthew Fireman, head of sales and distribution at PearTree Canada. In a wide-ranging conversation, Fireman provides a recap of 2025, which he calls a “unique year,” as well as insights into the overall impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the runup of gold prices. “This resulted in a lot of gold exploration companies wanting to come to market and raise money,” he notes.
PearTree Canada financed more than $150 million in October utilizing their flow-through shares model; Fireman is hoping to ride that momentum into 2026. Some items he’s keeping an eye on for the new year: interest rates, gold prices and, regardless of market conditions, providing white-glove service to clients.
*This transcript is provided for convenience and is based on the audio recording of the video. While efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, minor errors are possible.
Ashley Redmond: Hello, and thank you for watching today. My name is Ashley Redmond, and I’m a content producer at Canadian Family Offices. Today I’m joined by Matthew Fireman from PearTree Canada. He has over 25 years of experience in sales and relationship management, specializing in capital markets. Today, he’s the head of sales and distribution at PearTree Canada, where he drives business growth and strategic partnerships.
Matt, thank you for joining me today.
Matthew Fireman: Thank you. Appreciate it.
Ashley Redmond: From where you’re sitting, Matt, how was 2025?
Matthew Fireman: 2025 was a good year. It was a unique year, to say the least. I would say that the first half of the year was filled with a lot of volatility and uncertainty, primarily at the beginning, and it was a lot of overhang from 2024. In 2024, you’ll recall the federal government proposed changes to the capital gains inclusion rate. So, we were dealing with that in 2024 all the way to the end of the year.
There was uncertainty as to whether or not that was going to go into effect, only to have it postponed and ultimately canceled. So of course, that is a positive thing, but it certainly required a fair bit of shuffling around, not just on our part, but on anybody in the financial markets, and in the asset management space.
There were federal elections in Canada, obviously. So, we were looking at a potential change in government. We ended up with the same government, but a new prime minister. So again, what was going to be coming from that new change? We were a little bit uncertain. So that was a challenge as well.
And one cannot understate the importance, or the impact rather, of the United States presidential election. We knew that tariffs were coming. I don’t think anybody was fully familiar with what the impact of the tariffs would be. We saw that capital markets were incredibly volatile as a result, not just Canadian or American capital markets, but global capital markets.
So that obviously had an impact on our issuers with whom we work. And their ability to raise capital volatility is great for traders. And, you know, for being able to find a deal in the market. But when you want to raise money, a little stability goes a long way when you’re coming to markets. So it was a unique year in terms of navigating that volatility.
We did, however, see a really nice runup in the price of gold towards the end of this year, which resulted in a lot of gold exploration companies wanting to come to market and raise money. And we also had, of course, the federal budget that we were anticipating in the beginning of November. So when you were looking at the runup in the price of gold and in anticipation of the federal government, there were a lot of deals coming to market in that October timeframe.
In fact, in October alone, we financed over $150 million, which was a remarkable month. Absolutely incredible. Tremendously busy. Everybody was working around the clock to get those deals done. But again, it puts us off on a really nice year end, I would say. And I think that, with any luck, the momentum will follow through into 2026,
Ashley Redmond: Busy, busy.
Matthew Fireman: Busy, busy to say the least. Absolutely.
Ashley Redmond: What do you see when you look ahead to 2026?
Matthew Fireman: Well, I hope that 2026 is another busy year. Quite frankly. And I think that it probably will be. We’re looking at a little bit more uncertainty and volatility. I think we’ve got a lot of people suggesting that interest rates are going to be coming down.
So should that happen, we might see some nice activity on the equity markets, some increased participation. And I think that as long as the gold prices continue and hold steady, we’re going to see a lot more demand coming from the gold producers. So I think we’re going to have a really positive 2026. I think it should be positive all around, actually.
Ashley Redmond: So, Matt, how is PearTree positioning itself to support advisors, donors and family offices moving forward in 2026?
Matthew Fireman: Well, I’d say we’re doing it on, on a couple of fronts. We’re doing it from an operational perspective whereby we are investing heavily in terms of ensuring that we have the infrastructure in place to meet the demands.
You know, when you do a 100 close $150 million worth of business in one month, you have to have that infrastructure in place in order to, to handle that. So we’re investing heavily in that, obviously staffing up in key areas. We have invested quite a bit of money in technology. Cybersecurity is of the utmost importance for us.
We deal with a tremendous amount of confidential information. So it’s something we don’t take lightly whatsoever. We have invested in top quality CRM to keep track of what’s going on. Certainly. And, on the sales side to position ourselves with, with everybody in the market. We have a wonderful team of ten direct salespeople. Working here at PearTree across the country. This year, in 2025. We put boots on the ground in Saskatchewan, so we’re very happy about that. So we now have, local presence in the Saskatchewan market. We also have distribution agreements with a couple of, phenomenal, national firms and, they’re able to help us out and we reach out to, new demographics, new clients, and, broaden our scope and our reach.
And quite frankly, we always like to, if we do partner with somebody, we’d like to partner with people who are really best in class. We believe the territory is best in class. We pride ourselves in our white glove service that we give all of our clients, and we expect the same from our partnerships. So when we enter into a partnership, or if we do work, for example, and assist with the family office, we’re looking for that white glove service and that best in class.
Ashley Redmond: If you could offer one piece of advice for Canadian family offices planning for 2026, what would it be?
Matthew Fireman: One piece of advice. Give us a call. I guess that’d be my one piece of advice. And I say that jokingly. But, you know, if I think about the objectives of a family office, I guess objective number one is don’t lose any money.
Keep the wealth within the family. Grow the wealth. Priority number two would probably be to think about succession planning. And then priority number three would be to take that overall approach. And where do you fit in from? Not just an asset creation component, but philanthropy. And so if I look at wealth and asset protection, if I look at next gen and I look at philanthropy, these are all three things that PearTree does and what we do very well with our products.
And you know, what we’ve seen is we have a tremendous amount of philanthropic clients who their next-gen is now entering that stage of life where their own children are growing up a little bit more, and they’re in that position to start building and donating more to charity. And quite frankly, it’s, it’s really nice to see that that generation then involves even their children.
It’s something I do myself is that I have, I have a donor advised fund and for my philanthropic endeavors and my two daughters are involved in the selection process of where we put those funds. So I think those are areas, that we can certainly work with family offices. So in terms of the advice, it’s, you know, keep, keep your eye on the ball as to what it is that everybody’s looking to do.
And we’re going through a massive generational, a shift in generational wealth and wealth transfer that we haven’t seen before. I think it’s going to be ongoing for a while. And, yeah. And I think that would probably be the only thing I’d have to offer them. Wonderful.
Ashley Redmond: Thank you Matt.
Matthew Fireman: Thank you Ashley.
Ashley Redmond: For those watching that want more information on PearTree Canada, visit PearTree Canada.
Disclaimer: This story was created by Canadian Family Offices’ commercial content division on behalf of PearTree Canada, a member and content provider of this publication.