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TORONTO, ONTARIO: FEBRUARY 09, 2012 - Bay Street in Toronto, Ontario is seen here Thursday Feb. 9, 2012. (Tim Fraser for The Globe and Mail) (For ROB story by n/a)Tim Fraser/The Globe and Mail

GMP Capital Inc. has had another rough quarter, and its chief executive can't pinpoint when things will turn around.

But Harris Fricker hopes a top-to-bottom review of Canada's second-largest independent brokerage will spur "significant initiatives" that will pay off in 2013.

"Make no mistake, the goal is to increase the torque of our business, the financial benefit of which will become obvious in better market conditions," Mr. Fricker said on the company's third-quarter earnings call Friday after GMP reported a net loss of $358,000. "We remain confident we have the right people, platform and global market capabilities to make it happen," he said.

Pulling GMP through the spiral of global economic weakness and heightened risk aversion that has slowed business activity for more than a year will be no easy task. While executives said autumn had brought an improvement in sales and trading activity, Mr. Fricker said that pronouncing the worst to be behind GMP would be "premature."

The diluted loss of 3 cents per share compares to a loss of $4.6-million in the third quarter of 2011, or a diluted 9 cent per share.

The significant findings of the GMP review will be revealed when the company posts its next earnings results, but keep an eye out for better performances in the wealth management and broker dealer arms of the business. "We are looking at absolutely every operating service and determining where it should be housed, and how it should be represented going forward," said Mr. Fricker of these two units.

One place where GMP's changes are already visible are in its head count – a significant contributor to the business' expenses. Total head count in GMP's capital markets unit came in at 327 people, down from 349 last quarter. Total employee compensation and benefits in capital markets also fell a little from the previous quarter to $37.3-million – about 73 per cent of total revenue for the unit. Although, that's still significantly higher than the $29-million the third quarter last year.

For now, the company said it was encouraged by its performance in mergers and acquisitions, and said the company's growing debt capital markets expertise is "highly complementary" to its equities franchise.

Canada's largest independent brokerage, Canaccord Financial Inc., also reported earnings this week, and it is finding ways to retool its own business to get through the persistently poor economic conditions. Canaccord posted a net loss of $14.8-million for its second quarter of fiscal 2013, as compared to a loss of $5.3-million in the same quarter in 2012.

The company said that the plan to close underperforming branches of its wealth management business (predominantly in smaller markets) is coming along well. "To date, seven branches have already been closed, with the remainder to close before the end of December," said Canaccord CEO Paul Reynolds. He indicated this would allow the company to invest more heavily in the unit.

The expansion of Canaccord's U.K. and European wealth management business has also become a key focus for the firm, especially since the acquisition of Eden Financial's wealth management arm back in September. According to the company's recent numbers, it added about $1.3-billion to assets under management through Eden.

Canaccord's Canadian operations may have hired Philip Evershed as global head of investment banking, and Steve Buell as global research head, but in the course of the second fiscal quarter, the company's head count decreased by 92 employees – a move Mr. Reynolds called difficult but necessary. "As a result, we believe we've reduced our Canadian back office salaries expense by approximately 20 per cent," he said.

While business in Canada continues to be lacklustre, the Mr. Reynolds said that the next few quarters should bring an improvement in domestic M&A figures, since some fees the executives were expecting to see on that front did not come through in the most recent quarter.

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