Canaccord CEO Paul Reynolds dies after triathlon incident

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He'll be remembered for building a global investment bank. And he'll be credited for striking the deals that gave his firm some heft.

But more than anything, Paul Reynolds will always be known for having Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. in his blood.

A native of British Columbia, Mr. Reynolds, 52, died Thursday after suffering a medical emergency while competing in the Lavaman Waikoloa Triathlon in Kona, Hawaii. "At the time of his passing, he was at peace and surrounded by family and close friends," according to an internal note at Canaccord.

Mr. Reynolds started working at the dealer in the 1980s and rose through the ranks, ultimately becoming CEO. Friends say he was, in some ways, married to the firm – always working hard to help it grow, sometimes pushing physical boundaries to do so.

Through it all, he was poised and focused. Mining industry veteran Frank Giustra, a close friend who competed in the same triathlon at Mr. Reynolds's urging, said the former chief executive was consistently "very calm, very cool, very level-headed. Steady-eddy."

In recent years, Mr. Reynolds went on a health kick. Friends say the births of his two youngest children gave him a new perspective on life, pushing him to start eating well and to adopt a much more athletic lifestyle. Frank Holmes, who was close to Mr. Reynolds and runs U.S. Global Investors, referred to him as a "reinvigorated super-dad."

After skipping university to work on the trading floor of the former Vancouver Stock Exchange – which is where he met Mr. Giustra – Mr. Reynolds joined Canaccord in 1985 as an investment adviser. He later jumped to its investment banking arm, where he focused on financing emerging companies in the tech sector.

When he joined, Canaccord was a West Coast player, best known for helping retail clients buy and sell junior resource stocks. As the dealer matured, under the watch of founder Peter Brown, he was put front and centre in the expansion effort, moving to London where Canaccord eventually took many small-cap companies public on the Alternative Investment Market, London's secondary stock exchange.

Interviewed in London by The Globe in 2006, Mr. Reynolds, the son of John Reynolds, a former Conservative member of Parliament, showed his sense of humour. When asked why there was a carved wooden statue of a Mountie in the office, he shrugged and replied: "That's what happens when you get drunk at an auction."

When Mr. Brown stepped back from day-to-day management in 2006, he handed the reins to Mr. Reynolds. Shortly after the new CEO took over, Canaccord suffered through the financial crisis, when clients got stuck holding asset-backed commercial paper frozen by the financial meltdown – a major blow to a small independent dealer that didn't have the balance sheet of a bank. But the firm survived, and with Mr. Reynolds at the helm, started bulking up.

In 2010, he called David Kassie, the former CIBC World Markets investment banker who stirred up controversy when he left the bank-owned dealer and formed Genuity Capital Markets. The two men re-hashed merger talks that were killed by the financial crisis and agreed on a deal that saw Canaccord buy Genuity for $290-million. Mr. Kassie, who joined Canaccord as the chairman, is taking over from Mr. Reynolds as CEO.

Dan Daviau, who worked under Mr. Kassie at CIBC and later co-founded Genuity alongside him, is already Canaccord's CEO of North American capital markets.

Mr. Reynolds struck a second major deal in 2012, buying Britain-based brokerage Collins Stewart for $400-million – his firm's largest-ever acquisition. The purchase added a significant U.S. sales and trading presence, providing Canaccord Genuity with a solid base in three major markets.

The global expansion has only continued since with Canaccord expanding to Dubai to advise on mergers and acquisitions in the region. The dealer has also hired new investment banking heads in London and Asia in the past few years.

Mr. Reynolds leaves behind his wife and four children.