« Puffery in the marketplace, Thurs., September 15, 2005, 10:54 AM | Main | Some thoughts on gold, Thurs., September 15, 2005, 1:33 PM »

September 15, 2005

The President and his father helping out in NO, Thurs., Sept.15, 2005, 12:48 PM

Traders have the darkest humor, as the photo below shows. The President and his father helping out in New Orleans.

It's kind of like Jay Leno in the extreme.

I recall the day that seven brave astronauts lost their lives in the lift-off from Cape Canaveral in the 1980s. The joke from the trading desk at Dean Witter, where I worked at the time, was: Where do astronauts go on vacation?.... (answer) All over Florida."

There is a lot said in times like this. Some of it stupid.

But, on the other hand, full-time trading is a high-pressure activity. A former partner " the smartest one I ever had " Peter Brown, chairman of Canaccord Capital, once said to me: To stay in this game, you need a helluva sense of humour."

Canaccord Capital (TSX: CCI) has had a booming quarter. It is the leading underwriter in Canada for small to mid sized gold and oil companies. It has a terrific UK office as well, and now is going into the U.S. Earlier this week, it purchased Boston-based broker Adams Harkness for $20 million.

I was Canaccord founder and senior executive for Eastern Canada, and I can speak from experience that Peter Brown is one of the hardest working, hardest playing, smartest people I ever met.

Once at a party in Peter's room at the Hilton on the Riverwalk in New Orleans, attended by about 50 people, the bartender told me the following: In six years tending bar in this hotel I have never seen anything like this. He's offering the finest champagne in the hotel as the party wine and that's not the half of it!"

Yes, but the other half of that story is that Peter is also the most demanding person I've ever met, and he leads by example. He is the number one underwriter of venture financing IPO deals in Canada, maybe the world.

One day, it was the end of the week and Peter wanted to leave the office in Vancouver, but still had a line-up from the elevator to his office door. So he invited the entourages of four companies into his office. Then he asked them to sign a deal or leave. To have a little fun, they all signed their respective deals at the same moment, and headed off to the pub with Peter for drinks.

He called me once at noon his time. I was in Hong Kong at the Mandarin, so it was 3am my time. How he got through the switchboard I didn't want to know, but I took the call in the darkness.

He asked: Cara, how many buttons do I have on my phone?" and I replied I thought it was about five. Next came, Cara, how many buttons on the phones of 18 traders you just hired in Toronto?" and I replied it was a new phone system that I thought had about 100 each.

Then he shouted, to the applause of everybody in the room (it was a board meeting), How is it that I personally will do all the business and more that your 18 traders will do in total, by using a couple buttons only?"

Sometimes you just need to laugh. If you don't, you'll cry.

Posted by Posted by Bill Cara on September 15, 2005 12:48:55 PM | Category: Yada yada

Discourse