Inside the fall of a famed hedge fund

On Aug. 3, 2009, a single-engine Cessna 206 float plane took off from Ontario’s Lake Muskoka, the epicentre of Toronto’s prestige cottage country. It rose erratically before shaving tree tops, flipping, and bursting into flames. The two passengers—pilot Jack Lawrence and his companion, Carol Richardson, were killed instantly. News of the crash reverberated through the Canadian business old guard. Lawrence, a vital 75-year-old, was one of those Runyonesque Bay Street legends, the type not seen so much since the banks began buying up brokerages. Lawrence had made his name as an aggressive bond trader, then as the architect who built tiny broker Burns & Co. into power player Burns Fry; as its chairman, he sold the firm to the Bank of Montreal in 1994 for $400 million plus. Lawrence lingered at BMO as an éminence grise for a time but his competitive, combative nature wasn’t suited to the corporate corral. In 1996, he founded Lawrence & Company Inc., an investment and venture capital firm.

As the polite tributes poured in honouring Lawrence’s legacy—as a mentor to many, as the co-founder of Toronto’s Cambridge Club and an outspoken voice on national issues—more vitriolic murmurs were being vented in the salons and squash courts frequented by Toronto society. The topic: the fallout from Lawrence’s ill-fated hedge fund, Lawrence Partners, run by Lawrence & Co. subsidiary Lawrence Asset Management, or LAM. The fund, which went public in 2005 with a $25,000 investment minimum, attracted more than 1,000 investors, among them many prominent Canadians.

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