Who will win the race for next junior "major capital player"-AGF,Tiera or Guardian Capital

       Back in 2017 and 2018 I decided to make a fictitious race or challenge  between 3 junior financiers The three were Fiera Capital,AGF Management and Guardian Capital.The 3 were quite different in substance and style.Fiera was largely Quebec based with strong connections to the National Bank.AGF was broader based but with a smaller  number of marketable assets(mutual funds). It had a small number of company mutual funds:Guardian Capital had a larger market cap with it's biggest asset being about $25 million in BMO stock.But which one would be closer to being the next major junior capital player?I decided back in 2018 that the winner would be AGF Management for a number of reasons. 

    Guardian Capital 

  Guardian Capital was actually eliminated from the race.Although it's value or market cap was by far the biggest and hence the winner it had become a subsidiary of BMO and hence considered not elgible for this challenge.When the challenge started Guardian held about $25 million in BMO stock.Then it was trading at about $25 per share.BMO decided that they could sell more mutual funds by acquiring the asset manager, namely Guardian Capital.Guardian became a full subsidiary of BMO and no longer be elgible for our challenge                                                                                                                                  .It was now between Fiera and AGF.Fiera was active but continued to dilute earnings in order to increase total Assets under Management.But AGF used it's trained marketing team to build it's AUM.Furtermore AGF had traded in the $6-$8 price range in 2018 -2019 but now traders had bid the price up to$14 a share.Whereas Fiera stayed in a tight trading range around $6.

  Fiera Capital

   Fiera Capital has about $160 billion in assets under management.It will likely be in the top 3 junior, independent financiers in Quebec.And it just got another $600 million invested by an association in Quebec.But in Q2 net earnings decreased from $10 million to $5 million.And furthermore in Q2 it acquired all the equity in Fiera held by a Desjardins subsidiary.It intends to acquire not to be acquired.It may be second in the challenge but a fairly close second.

 Summary

  First, Guardian Capital had strong connections to BMO back in 2018 and since then it has increased. BMO has paid it a lot of money to manage all  it's mutual funds for BMO.Guardian Capital is hence no longer an independent junior finacier.Whereas Fiera Capital is the opposite.It had a lot of equity in it from Desjardins Investnents and paid back the equity.It believes that it can do well on it's own and it does have the largest amount of AUM of the three.It also has strong connections to other major players in the Quebec scene.Look for Fiera to be one of the very top independent players in Quebec as well as a medium sized player in Canada.It's price could stay in the $6 area but a small to medium sized acquisition could make it jump to $10 a share.This player could easily  be one of the large mid-sized financiers in Canada in 5 year's time.AGF is also emerging from it's junior status.For example AGF now  has a net worth of more than 50% of Laurentian Bank and almost a third of EQB bank.One medium-sized acquisition would make AGF only slightly smaller.One,but maybe both,of these large juniors could be the next major, junior capital financier in Canada. Look for AGF to trade in the $!2-$13.50 price range for the rest of 2025.            

Dale Mcintyre is a freelance writer that writes for several websites including Zacks Research,Masrketbeat.com and Yahoo Finance.He obtained his degree in economics a la universite d'Ottawa.