End of an Era

With the merger of Canaccord Adams and Genuity Capital Markets, many wondered if this would serve as an opportunity for the two firms to focus their attention on the technology space. That’s what mergers do. A chance to go back to the drawing board. Earlier today, the new firm Canaccord Genuity announced that it had discontinued research coverage on the big tech names: Apple, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia and Palm.

For the uninitiated, this was the coverage list of the infamous Peter Misek. Mr. Misek cut a broad swath across the Canadian tech landscape, as anyone who has every worked with him will attest. One can only assume that Canaccord Genuity’s new management team determined that there wasn’t enough business in covering the global tech leaders to warrant having an Analyst on it full time; an Analyst plus maybe two or three Associates doing much of the heavy lifting.

A few months ago, a rumour swirled around Bay Street that Cisco had just been through a dataroom at the Waterloo offices of Research in Motion. This time, the takeover of RIM was really going to happen! Jim and Mike weren’t getting along, etc., etc. At least that was the storyline. The media’s source? Some wondered. No deal ever surfaced. At least not yet.

That was followed by the Misek research call on CNBC that Palm was going to zero. Inventory was way too high. Sell every share. Mr. Misek got the channel checks on that one right, that’s for sure. Palm did a quickie M&A deal, saving shareholders a pile of dough. Palm didn’t go to zero in the end, but only due to the magnanimous behaviour of HP.

Larger than life, he was. Definitely the end of an era.

MRM
(disclosure – I own RIM; this post, like all blogs, is an Opinion Piece)