Over his 45-year career, Tim Burt mentored and taught many financial decision makers
INVESTORS around the world follow the Oracle of Omaha but hundreds of players in the local investment community are disciples of the Mystic of Manitoba.
Warren Buffett has become unquestionably one of the world’s most successful investors and richest people running Berkshire Hathaway from Omaha, Nebraska, but it’s hard to find somebody who has had a bigger impact on training the brain trusts behind many local investment companies and accounting firms today than Tim Burt.
The long-time value investor and founder of Cardinal Capital Management worked with hundreds of employees at the company’s Winnipeg head office over nearly three decades — a number of whom left the nest to start their own companies — but he also taught many hundreds more as a corporate finance instructor at the University of Manitoba’s I.H. Asper School of Business from 1993 to 2001.
He also worked for Richardson Greenshields at Portage and Main as its U.S. equity analyst and managed the U.S. stock portfolio for London Life Insurance Company, now owned by Winnipeg-based Canada Life.
Burt had taught securities analysis to university students a few years before when he lived in the U.S., but when Cardinal was in its infancy — it has more than $4 billion in assets under management today — finding a side hustle was an “economic necessity.”
Andrew Stibbard, Winnipeg-based regional managing partner of MNP, says the corporate finance course separated the wheat from the chaff.
“Tim was my professor for the dreaded ‘corp fi’ and he was awesome. It was probably the best course I took in commerce at the Asper School,” says. “He taught in such a way that combined academia and practical experience. He was a money manager and his approach related to people like me. A lot of what he taught was foundational for everything we do (at MNP). He had very practical ways of teaching. The whole class felt like that. Everybody was engaged.”
Today, Stibbard sits on Cardinal’s finance committee.
Many of Burt’s students went on to work for Cardinal, including Evan Mancer, who succeeded him as president eight years ago. Emily Burt didn’t take his classes but she didn’t have to. Her father preached the value investing gospel around the house.
“It’s kind of funny to me now,” says the company’s executive vice-president and chair. “When I think about my own approach to investing and how it was really just ingrained in me from Day One. For example, I just could never buy a stock that doesn’t pay a dividend. I wouldn’t have any faith at all in its earnings potential if its management team doesn’t have faith in their own ability to support a dividend.”
Emily Burt says she couldn’t fathom buying a stock for more than Cardinal’s research team says it’s worth.
“To me that would just be gambling and not even making the smart bet. I would feel like I’m throwing money away. I believe so strongly in fundamental research, doing the hard work to choose what to buy and what not to buy. I want to buy the winners and leave out the losers, not own the whole market that’s made up of them all.”
Tim Burt, who retired several years ago, says he’s proud of the many people he has influenced who have gone on to start their own companies, such as Tony Demarin at BCV Asset Management and David Brandt at Allied Wealth Management, because they’ve adopted a value investment approach.
He’s also particularly proud of the number of his students who went on to get their Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.
“I’ll bet 100 CFAs in Manitoba were students of mine. They got careers in the investment business, which I believe is the best industry to work in. It has the highest pay but the hardest thing is getting in. The best way to get in is with a CFA. Now a lot of them are vice-presidents or presidents in the industry.
“If I hadn’t been pushing that, I don’t know where they’d be today,” he says.
Gerry Bettig, a portfolio manager at BCV, worked with Burt at Cardinal for two years in the early 2000s.
He did research for the portfolio managers, including hunting for good ideas in which to invest.
“I already had a value mindset before I came to Cardinal and it got reinforced there. I learned a lot about the industry there. That was my start in the industry. I’ve always been grateful for the opportunity Tim gave me,” he says.
After two years, Bettig went out on his own and founded Antares Investment Management. (Antares merged with BCV in 2021.)
“Sometimes when you start something, you don’t know what you don’t know. My time with Tim at Cardinal gave me the start and confidence that I could make a go of it from there,” he says.
Elizabeth Marr, a Winnipeg-based investment professional, got to know Burt while serving on the board of CFA Winnipeg. As the president of the organization, Burt was determined to hold an investment event in Winnipeg and he put together the first-ever Investing in Western Canada conference. He convinced a number of Western Canadian companies to participate and make presentations, confident that people in the investment industry would attend.
“He pulled it off and it was quite a success. That stands out in my mind. He said, ‘Winnipeg can do this kind of stuff and we’re going to make it happen,’” she says.
Marr also worked at a couple of other companies that competed with Cardinal.
“You knew Cardinal was a worthy company with good people, products and principles. That’s what you need in our industry — smart people who are up front, clear and have integrity,” she says.
“Tim had a vision and a passion for the investment world. He felt he had the know-how and there were others that he could bring on board.”
