Each year, Caldwell Partners International chooses 40 Canadians who were under 40 in the past year to honour for their outstanding achievements. Click here to learn more about the program, and find more winners in the list below.
Cody Church’s story is intertwined with Alberta’s past, and it has been the aim of his professional career to invest in his province’s future.
He is the co-founder of Calgary-based private equity group TriWest Capital, one of the first such firms to focus on private equity investments in sectors other than oil and gas in Alberta.
Mr. Church’s family has been part of the fabric of the province for generations, and his large extended family still live in the region.
“Both my great-grandfathers homesteaded in Alberta,” he says “My 102-year-old grandmother still lives at her homestead.”
Mr. Church and his family, including six-year-old twins - a boy and girl - and a nine-year-old son, live on a ranch nearby, outside Calgary, raising a commercial herd of 400 cows.
He gained experience as an investment banker on Wall Street in the mid-1990s, working for EXOR America - a New York-based private equity firm - and Credit Suisse First Boston, after graduating with a bachelor of economics from Harvard University. He returned to Alberta in 1997.
TriWest Capital’s story began in 1998, with the partners buying controlling interest of 22 companies in 12 years. Three funds from institutional investors and pension funds have been raised over that time: $57-million in 1999, $120-million in 2003, and $250-million in 2007. Investors have seen a 29-per-cent return on investment in 12 years, said Mr. Cody.
This came from the company sticking with what it knew, which wasn’t oil and gas, he said.
“We are one of the first private equity funds in Alberta that didn’t look to energy. My partners owned Burns Foods and sold it in the mid-’90s; their experience was in distribution and food manufacturing,” said Mr. Church.
Other interests include Fraser River Pile and Dredge, a B.C.-based company celebrating its centenary this year.
Mr. Church is proud of his company’s “family approach.”
“I get to work with exceptionally talented, high-integrity people, who make all sorts of contributions to the communities they are in. In some respects we are just stewards, guiding a company for a number of years. It’s great to build a company and watch it have a great success when we sell it,” he said.
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