Stephen Jarislowsky grew a two-man Montreal boutique into a $60 billion manager for pension funds and foundations
Stephen Jarislowsky, who built Jarislowsky Fraser into Canada’s largest pension fund manager by the late 1980s and later brought institutional investors together under the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance, died in Montreal on October 8, at the age of 101.
His family announced the death in a statement issued through CNW with the Jarislowsky Foundation.
He founded Jarislowsky, Fraser & Company Ltd. in Montreal in 1955 with $100 of his own money and $50 from a partner, The Canadian Press reported.
The firm began as an investment research boutique and started managing money for a pension fund during the 1960s, according to Jacob Serebrin’s obituary for the Montreal Gazette.
The Canadian Press reported it extended advisory services and money management to pension funds, corporations, and government organizations over that decade.
By 1989 his Order of Canada citation from the Governor General of Canada identified him as “founder and president of Canada’s largest pension fund manager, Montreal’s Jarislowsky, Fraser & Company.”
The Globe and Mail reported in its obituary that the firm oversaw roughly $60bn in 2007 for pension funds, foundations, corporations and high net worth individuals.
Jarislowsky stepped back as chief executive officer in 2012 while remaining chairman and continuing to manage certain accounts, the Montreal Gazette reported.
Assets under management stood at about $40bn at that point, per The Canadian Press.
Scott Thomson, president and chief executive officer of Scotiabank in Toronto, said in a statement the bank released on October 8 that Jarislowsky was “an entrepreneur” and “a corporate governance pioneer and advocate.”
He said Jarislowsky “left a lasting impression in the world of finance, in Quebec, and across Canada.”
Scotiabank acquired the firm in 2018 for $950m and operates it as Scotia Jarislowsky Fraser.
Through the 1980s Jarislowsky directed an informal network of institutional money managers that together accounted for roughly 60 percent of stock market trades, using that weight to press recalcitrant boards, The Globe and Mail reported.
In a 1988 commentary in the Financial Post, cited by the Montreal Gazette, he wrote that directors should be “informed, ethical, and who learn the business of which they are directors.”
He wrote that directors “cannot be merely safe cronies of the majority shareholder or of management.”
He co-founded the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance in 2002 with Claude Lamoureux, then president and chief executive officer of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
The Montreal Gazette described the CCGG as a group of large investors working to promote good governance among the companies its members own.
The Globe and Mail reported it grew into Canada’s most powerful voice for institutional shareholders, pushing companies on boardroom practices and shareholder voting.
Jarislowsky helped establish the Montreal-based Institute for Governance of Private and Public Organizations, which The Globe and Mail dated to 2005.
He was also a long-standing director of the Canadian Foundation for Advancement of Investor Rights, Concordia University said in its October 8 notice.
David Johnston, former governor general and a long-time friend, told the Montreal Gazette that Jarislowsky lived by basic values of trust and ethics.
“He was very focused on building trust in investment institutions. And, in particular, focused on good governance, governance that was ethical, was long term and involved a fair deal for investors,” Johnston said.
