‘Keep talking with people and be patient’: Head of CAASA on deal-making

James Burron co-founded the Toronto-based Canadian Association of Alternative Strategies and Assets (CAASA) in 2018, and it is now a major source of education and networking events in the alternative investment space in Canada.

CAASA’s members include alternative investment managers, pension plans, foundations, endowments, and service providers. Its goal is to connect its members and the larger alt industry, including global players.

CAASA publishes research and holds conferences, such as its recent Family Office Summit held in April. The organization brings together participants from private and public pension plans, sovereign wealth funds, single- and multi-family offices, consulting firms, investment dealers, wealth managers and Canadian and global investment managers.

Here, Burron discusses how CAASA came about and what it does for its members and the alt investment industry.

How did you come to be a founding partner, with Caroline Chow, of CAASA?

I joke that I have the worst résumé in history because it’s all over the place. I started off as a financial advisor, then did some real estate planning, then went to Korea and did trading in the institutional market, which was mind-blowing.

I came back to Canada and decided to be in Toronto because it’s a financial hub, and during the post-2008 financial crisis I started working with the Alternative Investment Management Association and helped its membership grow. Caroline and I decided that we could do something like this – connecting people – ourselves.

What need does CAASA fill?

We do some advocacy work, but most of our output is putting on conferences. A lot of the interest in these comes from the investor side. Investors wouldn’t necessarily go to a siloed conference dealing with, say, hedge funds or cryptocurrency; they come to ours because they can see different types of investment and get educated in a bunch of areas. Our speakers do not pay to speak, so it’s not as though the person with the biggest chequebook gets to speak. We try to keep our membership fees low, too.

What do you see as some of CAASA’s major accomplishments so far?

In our first year [2018] we had 100 or so members — we have 400 now. Since COVID subsided, we have been running five conferences a year and several panel discussions. At this point, 20 per cent of our members are non-Canadian, so we’re drawing U.S., Caribbean, British and Asian managers and investors.

Who do you deal with most?

I’d say everybody. I’m on the road 186 days a year; 136 days so far this year. I’m on the lookout a lot for family offices, because it’s hard to identify them right away. We have a list of about 600 family offices that we invite to our conferences. Different family offices come to different ones.

Would you characterize yourself and CAASA as “deal whisperers”?

I don’t want to characterize us that way. We’re good at connecting people. [Paraphrasing] Warren Buffett: “In marriage and business keep your expectations low.”

Would you say there are particular alternative assets that are critical for Canadian investors in this investing climate?

Pension funds and single family offices (not as much multi-family ones) are looking at direct deals right now. They’re either buying into co-investments or doing their own deals into venture or private equity. And there’s real estate — investors are clubbing together to buy a company or a building.

Do you have advice for family offices and wealth managers?

You have to have the right asset base and personnel to do some of these deals. Generally, a single-family office will need half a billion dollars before they can pull together the professional staff they need to make and manage these kinds of transactions.

Some families are just looking at setting up a family office. We get multiple generations to our events; sometimes we have the eighth generation of a family that gathered its fortune 200 years ago. Being in the room at a conference with other families helps give them ideas on how to organize and professionalize.

Families also have to look at how to manage relatives in a professional way; for example, can they be fired?

Any interesting stories about your conferences?

The table talk is always interesting. We had one person who came up to me and said, “I just met the two people I literally came here to meet.” It’s quality not quantity. People at our meetings will connect with people they never met but wanted to or who hadn’t returned their calls.

Any parting observations?

In a sophisticated area like alt investment, you have to keep talking with people and be patient. That’s the value of our conferences, people can meet and talk. It’s not necessarily a 15-minute sale. It could take two years.

And it’s important to focus on what CAASA members are looking for. They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

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