A Bay Street Legend

A BAY STREET LEGEND ST. CATHARINES — At an age when his friends were getting bicycles and other birthday gifts a typical 14-year-old would receive, G. Scott Paterson never could have guessed how a gift from his grandmother would change his life.

That year, instead of unwrapping something on his wish list, he was given five shares of Abitibi Paper.

“It was really transformative,” Paterson, a prominent technology and media financier who is now considered a Bay Street legend, recalls. “It changed my life. I always thought you had to grow up and do something like fixing roads, so to be introduced into the concept of working with the stock market was something I never would have thought of.”

Paterson, who was keynote speaker at the Niagara Entrepreneur of the Year Awards 20th Anniversary Nominee Breakfast on Thursday morning in St. Catharines, was immediately bit by the bug. He followed his passion and began his career as a stock broker in 1985, after graduating from the University of Western Ontario.

Of course, even getting there was not an easy path for Paterson, whose rise in the business world ultimately had him profiled by Peter C. Newman in his 1998 bestseller Titans: How the New Canadian Establishment Seized Power alongside Canadian legends Peter Munk, Izzy Sharpe, Paul Desmarais, Izzy Asper and Gerry Schwartz.

Paterson was the son of a single mother and can recall moving from rental apartment to rental apartment throughout the Garden City, before finally finding a bit of security when he started to attend Ridley College in Grades 12-13. It was a huge financial sacrifice from his mother, but he was able to pay his way thanks to the support of bursaries from Ridley, along with a job as a youngster at Merrittville Speedway.

“I had the working mentality instilled in me very early thanks to my mother and grandmother,” said Paterson. “For my grandmother it was all about hard work.

She grew up in the Depression and she really pushed an old-fashioned work ethic.”

It was that push, he said, that ultimately helped him determine his goals. At the age of 18, he said he put together a wish list that included a goal of becoming a CEO within a 15-year timeframe.

“I did that, and the funny thing was, it happened,” he said.

After starting his career at Dominion Securities Pitfield in St. Catharines, he earned the nickname of ‘Cold-Call Cowboy’ and led the firm’s President’s Club by generating more commissions than anyone else in their first three years in the industry. A year later, while still a stock broker, Paterson launched his parallel venture capital career by creating his first “Pat” company one of the first (and first of many for him) Junior Capital Pools in Canada called Patcor Capital.

Just six years into his career, he had moved into corporate finance at Midland Walwyn, where he completed his first solo mandate as a senior investment banker by successfully handling a $15 million institutional financing for Kevin O’Leary’s SoftKey Software.

The technology world, he said, is one that he had a keen interest in focusing on as his career continued. By 1995 he started to work for Yorkton Securities where his successful career soon became one of Bay Street folklore. He transformed Yorkton rapidly into Canada’s only dedicated technology investment bank at the same time as the Internet was becoming a commercial reality and the early publicly traded Internet companies of the day led to the technology bubble.

“I had always been intrigued by it, and I guess I always figured that technology would have a major change on how we do things,” said Paterson. “I guess I found it a real exciting world, and I still do today. The world of technology changes so quickly and it’s an interesting business to be part of.”

Paterson took Yorkton to new heights, and under his leadership the firm raised more than $3 billion as lead underwriter and an additional $6 billion as comanaging underwriter for Canadian technology, Internet, biotechnology and film and entertainment companies. In February 2000, Yorkton completed 21 financings – more than one financing per day – a pace never matched in capital markets history.

Then, controversy hit. As respected as Paterson had become — he had served the Canadian securities industry as chair of the Canadian Venture Exchange and was vice-chair of the Toronto Stock Exchange — he came under fire following a high-profile, media-initiated investigation by regulators.

Paterson doesn’t like to discuss the issue, but noted one of his darkest days was when one of the Toronto daily newspapers attacked him repeatedly as being one of the most conflicted businessmen in Canada.

He said the newspaper stories led to one of his bank-owned competitors urging the regulators to rein Paterson in. Despite a year-long investigation, the regulators found no security rule or law breaches but Paterson said he felt cornered to make a high profile settlement with them.

“It was a challenging period,” he said, adding there was never any evidence he broke any securities rules or laws.

Newman, in his book, said the tech bubble’s “most imaginative imitator was a charismatic and precocious Bay Street genius named G. Scott Paterson who became the unwilling victim of his own success”.

Over the last decade, through what he describes as a “pragmatic approach”, Paterson shifted his focus to some major projects, including Lions Gate Entertainment, where he had been the second investor in the company when it was launched by one of his mentors, Frank Giustra, as a start-up in 1997. He remains a board member and today chairs the company’s Audit Committee.

Lions Gate now has a $4.5 billion market value and has produced such blockbuster films as The Hunger Games and TV shows such as Mad Men. In addition to a 2004 investment with fellow Ridley College alum James Swayze to take a fledgling software start-up called Symbility Solutions public (it now has a $90-million market value), he also took control of a start-up called JumpTV in 2005 and subsequently led the company as Chair and CEO through a merger with NeuLion Inc. in 2008. NeuLion is a world leader in the delivery of live video to Internet-connected devices on behalf of clients such as the NHL, NFL, NBA and UFC. The company has a $100-million market value.

He is proud of what he’s accomplished since picking up from his St. Catharines roots and beginning a new life in the big city, in Toronto.

“I think what I can look back and truly say, is you can do anything you dream,” he said. “You have to put the hours in, and the hard work, but when I look back and see what I’ve been able to accomplish, it’s an amazing feeling.”

As much as he is proud of his business success, outside of having his six children one of his proudest accomplishments is his philanthropic work, including cofounding the Merry Go Round Children’s Foundation (and its Kids, Cops & Computer program) in 1997 and remaining as a passionate chair of the board ever since — donating more than $600,000.

“The work there is so important,” he said. “When you look at technology and how it’s changed, you need a computer when you’re growing up or else you’re going to be behind in school.”

He’s also very active at Ridley, serving 15 years as a governor, and supporting bursaries, and making a donation to the college in 2011 that resulted in the new

Varsity Men’s Hockey dressing room being named in his honour. He is currently co-chair of Ridley’s 125th Anniversary (2013-14) fundraising campaign.

“I love that school, and I want to support the community and region,” he said. “My time at Ridley College fundamentally changed my life and I am grateful for that.

Article Source: https://www.niagarathisweek.com/news/a-bay-streetlegend/article_a8d40eb1-bffd-5aaf-8e23-8dd041c69806.html