Ethos
We don’t give advice we wouldn’t act on ourselves.
Kadenwood has no lending book, no trading desk, and no product to place. Advice is the entire business. Nothing on our side of the table can quietly point you toward the outcome that suits us.
We also buy companies. When we tell an owner what a business is worth, or which buyer will actually close, we are saying it as people who put their own money into the same kind of asset. That is a harder standard than a fee opinion, and it is the one we hold ourselves to.
Most owners sell a company once. We have run these processes for decades, from the arranging side. The point of hiring us is that the experience is ours and the outcome is yours.
Principles
What that commits us to.
Skin in the game.
We invest our own capital, deal by deal, in businesses we understand. An advisor who never has to be right with their own money is a different animal from one who does.
No conflicting business lines.
No lending. No trading. No fund with a deployment clock. Nothing that gives us a second reason to want your deal to happen.
Senior people, start to finish.
The people in the first meeting are the people who run the process. Work is not handed to someone you have not met.
Discretion is the product.
Most of what we do never becomes public, which makes us harder to research than firms that publish their wins. Names, terms, and outcomes stay with the parties who own them.
Transaction credentials available upon request.
Kadenwood principals in Vancouver. Louis Garoz-Ferguson, Founder & Managing Partner, is at right.
Ownership
Owned by the people who decide.
Kadenwood is closely held by its principals. There is no outside shareholder to satisfy, no institutional owner setting a target for the quarter, and no committee that can overrule the person who took your call.
That structure lets us decline a mandate we do not believe in, hold a process open when holding is right, and tell an owner the number they would rather not hear. A firm that answers to someone else eventually says what that someone else needs it to say.
Leadership & Team
The leadership accountable for the work.
Dominic Spooner
Founder & Chairman Emeritus
Vancouver
- Thirty-six years in capital markets and investment banking, in senior roles across private wealth and special situations.
- Has raised capital for growth companies through mergers and acquisitions, public offerings and private equity partnerships in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
- Leads Birchwood, the firm's merchant bank, which takes principal positions and co-invests directly alongside institutional capital.
- Works the transactions that need structuring rather than marketing, cross-border and often contested, and closes them on relationships held in three regions.
- As Chairman Emeritus he chairs the advisory board rather than the executive line, and is where a situation goes when it has no clean precedent.
Louis Garoz-Ferguson
Founder & Managing Partner
Vancouver
- Founded Kadenwood Group to bring institutional resources to middle market capital advisory.
- Built the firm's cross-border regulatory framework across FINRA, SEC and CIRO jurisdictions.
- Sets the firm's investment posture: direct positions taken deal by deal, in businesses the firm understands, bought to be grown and driven to a return.
- Decides which mandates the advisory practice accepts, and which it declines.
Harlan Ryker
Managing Partner, COO
London
- Runs origination and the capital-partner network: who we approach, in what order, and what happens to a mandate once it is signed.
- Owns the pipeline from the first approach to the point a deal team picks it up.
- Keeps the firm's counterparty relationships current, so a live mandate opens with names rather than a search.
- As chief operating officer he is accountable for how the firm runs between mandates: how a deal team is staffed, how the work is sequenced, and the standard a process is delivered to.
Ruben Schwagermann
Managing Director
Mauritius
- Holds institutional investor relationships across three continents.
- Specializes in non-dilutive capital markets, M&A and growth equity.
- Works New York, Europe, South America and Mauritius, and has raised capital in all four.
- Concentrates on structures that fund an owner without diluting them, where the alternative on the table is giving up control.
Joshua Naudé
Managing Director
Cape Town
- Heads the secondaries practice, covering both secondaries and primaries.
- Structures and runs sell-side mandates across M&A, venture capital and private placements.
- Previously raised capital as a fund manager for mining, oil and gas, and real estate.
- Runs both halves of a secondaries process: pricing the position, and finding the counterparty prepared to take it.
Lucy Ryker
Director of Operations
London
- Runs the operations behind live mandates: who is doing what, by when, and what the client sees.
- Builds the reporting the firm runs on, so a partner can say where a deal stands without asking three people.
- Coordinates between deal teams, compliance and capital partners when a mandate crosses all three.
- Owns the engagement calendar, so a client is told where a process stands before they have to ask.
Jack Landry
Managing Director, Project Finance
Vancouver
- Structures and closes project finance in infrastructure and energy.
- Takes a quantitative line on capital structure, risk allocation and the model behind both.
- Runs syndication and the counterparty conversations with institutional lenders and development finance partners.
- Works the long end of the book, where a financing has to survive construction and then a multi-decade operating life.
Niels Blonk
Vice President
Amsterdam
- Has transacted in technology, medtech and defence.
- Founded a B2B technology venture and sold it before moving into investment banking.
- Advises venture-backed founders on strategy, growth and commercial scaling.
- Having built and sold a company of his own, he reads a founder's position from the inside rather than from the model.
Axel Tavarez
Vice President
San Jose
- Advises large enterprises on capital markets transactions.
- Executes cross-border deals across the Americas, where the regulatory answer changes with the jurisdiction.
- Covers industrials, technology and professional services.
- Carries the jurisdictional work on cross-border mandates, where a structure that clears in one market stalls in the next.
Luuk Visser
Vice President
Amsterdam
- Supports capital markets and advisory engagements.
- Works out what a prospective client actually needs financed, and what they are trying to achieve.
- Builds the models and runs the diligence on live deals.
- Prepares the material a partner takes into a first meeting.
Heidie Naomi
Investor Relations
Canada
- Manages the firm's institutional and family office investor relationships.
- Runs investor communications and LP reporting, and keeps the relationship record current.
- Supports syndication and capital introduction on live mandates.
- Is the first point of contact for investors already inside a Kadenwood process, and the one who closes the loop after it ends.
Kenneth J. Bock
Senior Advisor
New York
- Senior advisor to the firm, engaged across advisory mandates where his experience fits the situation.
- Works with deal teams as a second set of eyes on process, structure and counterparty judgment.
- Brought in where a process benefits from a senior view that sits outside the deal team.
Stephen Yeh
Vice President, Debt Capital Markets
Los Angeles
- Covers debt capital markets: structuring, pricing and placement of credit.
- Runs the lender conversations on live mandates, from first soundings to final terms.
- Keeps a current view of where credit is available and on what terms, before a mandate needs it.
Ingrid C.
Investor Relations
Calgary
- Manages investor relationships and communications for the firm.
- Supports capital introduction and keeps the investor record current on live mandates.
- Keeps the relationship with investors running between transactions, not only during them.
Karla Bessa
Associate, Origination & Business Development
Vancouver
- Works origination and business development: the first conversations that become mandates.
- Builds and maintains the outreach that keeps the firm's pipeline current.
- Qualifies inbound interest so a partner's first call is with a counterparty worth the hour.
Charles Langlois
Junior Analyst
Los Angeles
- Works origination across the firm's advisory practice.
- Runs the research and outreach behind new mandate conversations.
- Maps the companies and owners a mandate should reach before outreach begins.
Jacky Ly
Junior Analyst, Real Estate & Infrastructure
Vancouver
- Supports real estate and infrastructure capital markets engagements.
- Builds the models and materials behind live financings.
- Prepares the analysis behind counterparty conversations on live processes.
Sam Cooper
Junior Analyst
London
- Supports advisory engagements from first research to the material a deal team works from.
- Works with founder-led businesses at the point they first engage institutional advice.
- Builds the research that turns a first conversation into a scoped mandate.
Bernice Chan
Junior Analyst
Vancouver
- Supports the analyst team on research and materials for live engagements.
- Builds and checks the datasets that live engagements run on.
Will Wang
Junior Analyst
Toronto
- Supports the analyst team on research, models and the numbers behind them.
- Studies economics, mathematics and statistics at the University of Toronto.
- A CFA Level II candidate.
The Advisory Group
Nine senior advisors, engaged by situation rather than by title.
What each of them has worked on stays with the counterparties it belongs to, so the record is stated in aggregate. The discretion we extend to our counterparties starts with our own people.
Senior advisors
Years combined experience
Average years each
Global institutions represented
Working languages
Board appointments
Our advisors are drawn from institutions including
- Morgan Stanley
- Rothschild & Co
- Credit Suisse
- J.P. Morgan
- Citigroup
- Guggenheim Securities
- Moelis & Company
- Lehman Brothers
- Bear Stearns
- Macquarie
- PwC
- TD Securities
- CIBC World Markets
- Raymond James
- Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan
Experience described on this page includes work performed by individuals while employed at previous institutions, presented to demonstrate the collective experience of the Kadenwood advisory group. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Capabilities
Where the group has done this before.
Healthcare & Life Sciences M&A
Sell-side and buy-side processes across providers, pharmaceutical services, medical technology and diagnostics. The group's deepest concentration, built in senior coverage roles at both global and independent banks.
Infrastructure, PPP & Project Finance
Concession structuring, public-private partnership procurement, and project financings across transport, utilities and social infrastructure, including advisory delivered alongside government and multilateral programs.
Climate & Energy-Transition Finance
Blended and concessional structures, green bond frameworks, and transition capital for energy and resource assets. Work at the point where development finance and private capital have to agree on terms.
Leveraged Finance & Debt Capital Markets
Underwritten and club leveraged loans, high-yield issuance, and unitranche and mezzanine structures. Covenant design and pricing judgment formed on the arranging side of the market rather than observed from it.
Private Equity, Credit & Special Situations
Control and significant-minority equity, private credit, and situations where the capital structure is the problem to be solved. Sponsor-side experience across buyout, growth and secondary transactions.
Restructuring & Balance-Sheet Repair
Liability management, non-core wind-downs, distressed M&A, and the finance-function work that follows a recapitalization. Experience on both the company and the creditor side of the table.
Capital Raising & Investor Distribution
Private placements and fund formation, with distribution into institutional, family office and private wealth channels. Investor relationships maintained continuously rather than assembled at the point of need.
Family Office & Institutional Capital
Direct and co-investment programs, special-purpose and cross-border structures, and portfolio-company support for families and the institutions that invest alongside them. Built for family offices rather than presented as one.
Technology, Software & Data
Software, financial technology and data-infrastructure businesses, on both the financing and the exit side. Includes operating experience inside venture-backed platforms, not only advisory coverage of them.
Financial Institutions & Insurance
Banks, specialty lenders, asset and wealth managers, and insurance intermediaries: capital planning, portfolio transactions, and changes of ownership.
Governance & Board Advisory
Board and special-committee mandates, fairness considerations, and the governance work that precedes a sale or a recapitalization. Drawn from advisors who have held the seats, not only advised them.
Among the group
- A transaction recognized as a Euromoney Deal of the Year.
- A top-3 ranked equity research analyst across the StarMine, Brendan Wood and Greenwich surveys.
- Recognized by the chief executive of a global bank as pivotal to its 2022 strategic restructuring.
- Knowledge Partner to the B20 Finance & Infrastructure Task Force.
- A UN Joint SDG Fund proposal approved as one of four from 155 submissions.
- Three capital-markets and investment-banking practices built from inception.
- More than 20 years of board experience across 17 family- and private-equity-owned companies.
- The finance function led for one of the largest non-core asset wind-downs in European banking.
- A Big Four infrastructure advisory practice grown from 11 to more than 60 professionals.
- Deal teams led covering more than 300 healthcare and life-science clients.
Footprint
Two offices. Wider coverage.
Offices
Vancouver, Suite 6801, 1151 West Georgia Street
New York, 250 Park Avenue, 7th Floor
Coverage
Americas
New York · Vancouver · San Francisco · Miami · Toronto
Europe
London · Zurich · Geneva · Frankfurt · Paris · Amsterdam
APAC
Hong Kong · Singapore
Offices are where the firm sits. Our people are based across North America, Europe, and Africa. Coverage marks the markets where our principals and advisors have transacted and hold standing relationships. Neither is a claim of local registration.
Regulatory architecture
How we’re structured.
Parent
Kadenwood Group is the parent organization and brand name. Securities activities are conducted through regulated entities.
United States
Securities transactions are conducted through Enclave Capital LLC, an SEC-registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC (CRD No. 22732, SEC No. 8-39592).
Canada
Parvis Investment Services Inc., an Exempt Market Dealer registered with the provincial securities commissions under the CSA framework, registered in all Canadian provinces. Parvis Investment Services Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Parvis Invest Inc.
Cross-border
Cross-border transactions between the United States and Canada are facilitated through SEC Rule 15a-6 chaperoning arrangements, with Enclave Capital LLC serving as the chaperoning broker-dealer.
Ownership
The Kadenwood Group of companies is owned by 1438076 B.C. LTD., a British Columbia corporation.
Nothing on this page constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or investment products, nor legal, tax, accounting, or investment advice.