Fatal Occurrence 2009O1629
Lawrence a tough visionary
Friends, colleagues and former competitors were in a state of shock yesterday as they digested the news that Jack Lawrence, former chief executive of Burns Fry Ltd. and a senior executive at BMO Nesbitt Burns, and his companion, Carol Richardson, were killed in a plane crash in Muskoka, the heart of Ontario's cottage country on Monday.
Lawrence, an experienced pilot who had survived two previous crashes, was flying the aircraft when it crashed soon after leaving the family cottage. Lawrence, who helped guide the 1994 merger between Burns Fry and Nesbitt Thomson and who after leaving the securities industry formed a money management firm, Lawrence & Co., was 75. He had six children and three grandchildren.
"He was a guy who was driven, with a good vision and a good perspective on what was going on in the financial community. And he did it very successfully," said Mark Kassirer, a fixed-income professional who worked with Lawrence for about 20 years. "He was good with interest rates and a good risk manager," added Kassirer who now manages a hedge fund. "He was definitely the ultimate driving force behind [creating] a pretty successful firm, one of the major bulge bracket firms in Canada."
John Crow, former governor of the Bank of Canada, met Lawrence in the late 1980s when the bank got serious about dealing with inflation. "It was a controversial time for monetary policy. Jack was a strong supporter of the monetary policy being practised at that time. He was on the right side of the argument and not afraid to say so," said Crow who, while having no formal role at Lawrence & Co., is a trustee/director on some of the funds it manages. "He certainly stood up and did what was right in terms of the investor and what they could reasonably expect. They got a fair deal."
Tony Fell, former chief executive at RBC Capital Markets, a firm that tried to merge with Burns Fry in 1979, said "it's a sad day." He described Lawrence as "a loner and one of the world's best bond traders."
A former business partner described Lawrence as "one of the toughest guys I have ever met when it came to doing business ... also one of the most incredibly self-disciplined people I have met. It was just not physical discipline," though Lawrence's regular workouts at Toronto's Cambridge Club, where he was one of the founders, would test people many years younger. He also had incredible "mental discipline," a key attribute when the bond market was in one of its perennial bouts of disarray. "Jack was like an ice cube. He had his emotions totally under control and you could see his mind working through it."
This former colleague described Lawrence as a good manager. "He never micro-managed. He trusted you and had good people in charge." Personal prejudices didn't interfere with personnel decisions. "If he didn't like somebody but he thought they were good, he would leave them alone."
That approach may have been required given the 1976 merger between Lawrence's firm, Fry Mills & Spence, and Burns Brothers & Denton. "It was an interesting culture between the old aristocrats, and the street fighters."
Mentoring was another part of Lawrence's management style. Through the years, he selected and backed a number of up-and-comers, people he believed could make a difference.
