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.
Louis Garoz-Ferguson, Founder & Managing Partner, in Vancouver.
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.
Igor Sokolovsky
Chairman
New York
- Over twenty years in healthcare and life sciences investment banking. Coverage spans services, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, animal health and diagnostics.
- Sell-side experience through the consolidations that reshaped those sectors: Express Scripts and Medco, Life Technologies to Thermo Fisher, Celesio to McKesson, Abaxis to Zoetis.
- Cross-border processes requiring clearance in more than one jurisdiction: Thomson Reuters' financial and risk division to Blackstone, Refinitiv to London Stock Exchange Group.
- Chairs the advisory group. Consulted on healthcare situations without 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.
- Retains final authority on mandate acceptance.
Harlan Ryker
Managing Partner, COO
London
- Leads origination and the capital-partner network.
- Owns the pipeline from first approach through signing and handover to a deal team.
- Maintains the firm's standing counterparty relationships.
- As chief operating officer, accountable for deal-team staffing, work sequencing and delivery standards.
Ruben Schwagermann
Senior Managing Director
Mauritius
- Institutional investor relationships across three continents.
- Specializes in non-dilutive capital markets, M&A and growth equity.
- Has raised capital in New York, Europe, South America and Mauritius.
- Focuses on structures that fund an owner without diluting control.
Joshua Naudé
Managing Director
Cape Town
- Heads the secondaries practice, covering secondaries and primaries.
- Structures and executes sell-side mandates across M&A, venture capital and private placements.
- Previously raised capital as a fund manager across mining, oil and gas, and real estate.
- Prices positions and sources the counterparties to take them.
Lucy Ryker
Director of Operations
London
- Runs execution operations on live mandates: workstreams, deadlines and client deliverables.
- Owns the firm's reporting and the deal-status record behind it.
- Coordinates deal teams, compliance and capital partners on mandates that cross all three.
- Owns the engagement calendar and client status reporting.
Jack Landry
Managing Director, Project Finance
Vancouver
- Structures and closes project finance in infrastructure and energy.
- Quantitative focus on capital structure, risk allocation and the underlying model.
- Runs syndication with institutional lenders and development finance partners.
- Covers long-dated financings that must survive construction and a multi-decade operating life.
Niels Blonk
Senior Vice President
Amsterdam
- Transaction experience across technology, medtech and defence.
- Founded and sold a B2B technology venture before moving into investment banking.
- Advises venture-backed founders on strategy, growth and commercial scaling.
Axel Tavarez
Vice President
San Jose
- Advises large enterprises on capital markets transactions.
- Executes cross-border mandates across the Americas.
- Covers industrials, technology and professional services.
- Carries the jurisdictional structuring where a transaction clears in one market and stalls in the next.
Luuk Visser
Vice President
Amsterdam
- Supports capital markets and advisory engagements.
- Scopes prospective client requirements and financing objectives.
- Builds the models and runs diligence on live transactions.
- Prepares first-meeting materials.
Heidie Naomi
Investor Relations
Canada
- Manages the firm's institutional and family office investor relationships.
- Runs investor communications and LP reporting, and maintains the relationship record.
- Supports syndication and capital introduction on live mandates.
- Primary contact for investors inside a live process.
Kenneth J. Bock
Senior Advisor
New York
- Senior advisor to the firm, engaged across advisory mandates by situation.
- Works with deal teams on process, structure and counterparty judgment.
- Engaged where a process benefits from a senior view outside the deal team.
Stephen Yeh
Vice President, Debt Capital Markets
Los Angeles
- Covers debt capital markets: structuring, pricing and placement of credit.
- Runs lender conversations on live mandates, from first soundings to final terms.
- Maintains a current view of credit availability and terms.
Ingrid C.
Investor Relations
Calgary
- Manages investor relationships and communications for the firm.
- Supports capital introduction and maintains the investor record on live mandates.
- Maintains investor coverage between transactions.
Karla Bessa
Associate, Origination & Business Development
Vancouver
- Covers origination and business development.
- Builds and maintains the outreach behind the firm's pipeline.
- Qualifies inbound interest ahead of partner conversations.
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 supporting counterparty conversations.
Sam Cooper
Junior Analyst
London
- Supports advisory engagements from initial research through deal-team materials.
- Covers founder-led businesses engaging institutional advice for the first time.
- Builds the research that scopes a first conversation into a mandate.
Bernice Chan
Junior Analyst
Vancouver
- Supports the analyst team on research and materials for live engagements.
- Builds and validates the datasets behind live engagements.
Will Wang
Junior Analyst
Toronto
- Supports the analyst team on research and financial modelling.
- Reads economics, mathematics and statistics at the University of Toronto.
- CFA Level II candidate.
The Advisory Group
Eight 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
- 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.