Danielle Skibidi Skipp - the She-Wolf of Bay Street - has struck again! She worked to build a firm selling crappy products and then skedaddled out of Dodge at the first sign of trouble. Danielle left Nicola Wealth around the same time as they announced their liquidity issues. She has not yet named her new employer, but she has described her new role as being CEO for a “Canadian wealth management acquisition strategy” on behalf of a US private equity firm. This involves a “growing collective of passionate wealth advisors across Canada”. Who could that be? According to a source, the firm is called Trivest, a Florida-based private equity firm with an office in Toronto and $5B in assets. I see they acquired a chain of dental clinics in Canada, but can't find what wealth management firms they own here.
Danielle’s past 3 stints involved performance fees - unwarranted performance fees, I might add. In 2010, she setup hedge fund SW8 along with her husband Matt Skipp. Nicola also promoted that hedge fund (Danielle is the sister of Nicola president David Sung). Incidentally, that fund had positive returns in each of the first 36 months of its existence. Which is pretty remarkable. I distinctly remember thinking: “If only I could be like Matt Skipp.” Today, of course, I understand these are meaningless streaks. And that periods of extreme outperformance will be followed by commensurate periods of underperformance, in all but the rarest of cases. Matt Skipp eventually closed the fund and acquired a flag manufacturer. That business has done really well, sales soared following the surge of patriotism due to the tariff war. This is a great outcome for Matt Skipp, I can totally respect.
After SW8, Danielle was COO for BloombergSen. That hedge fund lost 37% in Q1 of 2020 (they had horrible performance overall). Danielle left in April 2020 to join Nicola. In addition to being the Chief Legal Officer at Nicola, she was also the Managing Director for Ontario and a director of the firm. She even chaired the Nicola Investment Review Board. Based on what credentials, I don't know. She recruited many clients and advisors to the firm and now she is gone! Most Nicola clients probably don’t realize the predicament they’re in and the recent clients are the worst off (since recent performance has been lacklustre).