4Thoughts: Get to know us
Potentially some of you that have subscribed to 4Thoughts know at least one of the Co-Founders and Partners at 4Front Advisory. Our initial push to grow our distribution will be from existing friends, former colleagues and professional contacts via LinkedIn, Twitter and other apps. You can find out more about 4Front Advisory Inc. here Website, including the typically somewhat generic bios for the four of us.
For those of you that we have not yet met, we thought it would be worthwhile for us to provide a more detailed overview of our team, as you will be getting to know us more in coming posts!
Chris Feltin
I am one of the many Saskatchewan transplants that moved to Calgary for a career in oil & gas. I grew up in a small farming town and pursued by engineering degree in Saskatchewan. I ended up the oil & gas industry and spent several years in small town Alberta in various engineering roles. My growing interest in finance and investing led to me pursuing my MBA at Queen’s University. From there, I landed at Tristone Capital (acquired by Macquarie Bank in 2009) and spent 12 years as an equity research analyst covering Canadian Oil & Gas companies, eventually heading up the research department as a Managing Director with the firm. From there, I spent five years as VP Corporate Planning and Development at Seven Generations Energy, quickly realizing that helping to run a company from the inside is vastly different than analyzing from the outside.
Shane Dungey and I worked together at Macquarie and it was through chats over subsequent years where we talked about starting a business together. We think there is an opportunity to help emerging companies with their capital markets strategy and work with them as partners versus simply clients.
I like numbers and data and strive to bring a blend of technical & financial analysis to our clients. With our 4Thought Substack, we intend to provide far more detail and analysis for our corporate clients, while providing greater insight than most investors typically get access to. We have several ideas we plan to execute on over coming months and I am excited to meet new companies and new management teams in new sectors to share on this platform.
Shane Dungey
While I’m not a Saskatchewan transplant like Chris, I did make the big move from Toronto to Calgary back in June 2008. I grew up in what I felt was the small town of Richmond Hill in the house my parents still reside in (yes, they have done well purchasing a home on a corner acre lot just north of highway 7 off Yonge Street for $37k in the late 60’s). I spent my formative years doing all the things a kid from Richmond Hill did when they were figuring out what this life was all about. Many of those things determined my career path and ensured that politics was not going to be an in my future, but we can chalk those up to life experience. I played baseball, soccer, lacrosse but eventually decided to focus on hockey as my passion. I was lucky enough to play junior hockey in my hometown and captained York University to its first national final four appearance since my brother won a national championship with the (then named) Yeomen while pursuing my undergraduate degree in Political Science and Economics. After a very brief stint in the Team Canada program, I spent the better part of the next four years plying my trade in the minors and in Europe, finally hanging up the skates in 2000.
As we all know sports teach you a lot about life and help you develop skills, one of the most important ones for me was networking. Thanks to a good relationship with a teammate in my teenage years I was able to land my first job of my career at CI Funds. I was lucky enough to learn from Bill Holland and Peter Anderson about management while navigating the steep learning curve in capital markets. From there I was quickly recruited to AEGON Capital, the investment division of AEGON/Transamerica life and was once again blessed to be around some great mentors, one of which is another partner at 4Front, Glenn Paradis. Over my 8 years at AEGON, I was the head trader and portfolio manager.
In 2008 I made the leap to join Tristone Capital on the sell side/investment banking group in Calgary where I met another partner at 4Front, Chris Feltin. I remained in the industry with time at Macquarie Canada and finally rejoining much of the Tristone team at AltaCorp. In 2019, I decided to take the leap to round out my knowledge base in the capital cycle by joining industry, heading up the investor relations and capital market strategy for an organic cannabis producer. During my time in industry, I joined the Board of Directors of a public US focused MSO cannabis producer.
My experience in the capital markets from investor to ‘broker’ to end user of capital I began to see that there is a need for the services 4Front offers. As Chris has mentioned there is an opportunity to help emerging companies with their capital markets strategy. We differentiate ourselves from our peers with our experience and approach as partners and can assist investors in gaining exposure to industries and exciting opportunities they normally wouldn’t have exposure to.
Jon Varley
Originally from Toronto, I now call Calgary home after moving out here in 2017. Before that I spent 12 years working on Bay Street, first as an institutional equity sales trader at Canaccord before moving over to AltaCorp Capital, a brokerage based in Calgary. During my time as an equity sales trader, I covered accounts across Canada and the US with a focus on Toronto, Montreal and NY. I was always interested in technical analysis in combination with fundamentals when it came to picking investment opportunities and I still rely on this pairing of analysis to tell me not only what to buy but when. The impetus for starting 4 Front comes from realizing that many smaller public and private companies don’t have a clear understanding of how capital markets work, from speaking with broker dealers to pitching their story to potential investors there are many pitfalls that need to be avoided.
Glenn Paradis
I was born and raised in a small town in Ontario, but I have made up for it by travailing to over 80+ countries in the following decades. I have a love for travel and with it and an innate sense of curiosity about how cultures learn to adapt and the fantastic ways they innovate to survive and thrive.
As a portfolio manager overseeing $2B in assets, I brought that same level of curiosity as Head of Equities for over 20 years. Providing talented entrepreneurs with the capital and know-how of the capital markets to give them every chance to succeed in a competitive environment
Whether it is food security, electrification of transportation, lowering the level of carbon in the atmosphere, or the application of Big Data and AI to help solve the massive problems our beautiful planet faces in the generations to come.
My focus has been on private companies and small and mid-capitalization public companies. I have advised and invested across various companies in technology, clean energy, and automation in vehicle production and green and brownfield play in lithium, nickel, and other essential raw materials.
My goal with 4Front is to accelerate the process of innovation to help entrepreneurs create world-leading companies that will help solve the many problems we face.