By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Feb. 11, 2008 (Feb. 13 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

It’s not often that you see a CEO taking a break from a busy, growing company, but when Fidus chief executive Michael Wakim decided it was time for a sabbatical, he found a reliable stand-in with his interim president, former Tropic Networks CEO Kevin Rankin.

So what do you do when you’re thinking of taking a long break and need an executive replacement, or if you’re looking for someone to fill a hole while you search for a more permanent person to take on the role? The OBJ spoke to Mr. Wakim about how he found Mr. Rankin, and other tips to finding the perfect interim executive.

OBJ: So why did you decide to do this interim hiring?

WAKIM: I’m part of the Mindtrust group of CEOs in Ottawa, we meet for breakfast once a month and it’s a really helpful time … I’ve gotten to know the people that go to Mindtrust quite well, and when I was looking for someone to help me at Fidus, naturally I looked at some of the people I’d made friends with in the Mindtrust group, and Kevin was one of them.

The reason I wanted to do it was because the company was doing so well that it couldn’t have been a better time. We have a record backlog of work that needs to be done, four-months worth of projects and financials are the strongest they’ve ever been, so I thought it was the best time I could possibly think of to take a break.

OBJ: It’s rather an unusual step to take a break from a busy company that you’ve founded and hand over the reins to someone else, isn’t it?

WAKIM: It’s hard to believe but the company is over six years old now and it’s grown by 20 or 30 per cent every year for six years in a row Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Feb. 11, 2008 (Feb. 13 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

Local life sciences firms Liponex Inc. and ImaSight Inc. are mulling over a $10-million merger, at the same time as Liponex is facing delisting from the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The two companies, both of which were among the OBJ‘s 2007 Startups to Watch, have entered into a non-binding letter of intent for a business combination that would see current ImaSight shareholders own about 65 per cent of the combined company.

“We’ve been looking at strategic options for a number of months now,” Liponex CEO Bill Dickie told the OBJ. “We felt we needed to widen the scope of the company so we weren’t entirely dependent on one product line, and what attracted us about ImaSight was that it’s a revenue-stage company which is quite stable going forward.”

The deal would see Liponex acquiring all of the issued and outstanding shares of ImaSight through some kind of share purchase arrangement, with the value of the merger “in the range of $10 million,” according to ImaSight CEO John Brooks.

Both companies have said Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Feb. 4, 2008 (Feb. 7 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

Everyone’s been talking about the talent crunch in Ottawa and elsewhere, but fast-growing optical networking company BTI Systems had no problems finding a new executive to oversee its global operations.

BTI’s management team got a little help from its friends to identify former BreconRidge president John Haydon as the ideal candidate for its senior vice-president of global operations role, and he joined the company earlier this month.

Franca Marinelli, BTI’s vice-president of global organizational development, and CEO Lance Laking shared with the OBJ some of the elements to consider for an equally smooth ride in the executive recruitment process.

OBJ: Could you describe John Haydon’s role in the company?

LAKING: Global operations … includes our overall manufacturing strategy, it takes in our customer care, customer service organizations. It also includes our information management systems, our IT strategy as being a critical deliverable for the senior operations executive. In that, we have John Haydon working very closely with our sales organization to help drive the business scaling, and with that there’s an extension to his involvement both with our customers and supporting them from the operations side, and our channel partners. It’s a pretty multi-faceted and involved position that is certainly part of our senior executive team.

OBJ: And why did you decide to hire for this particular role at this particular time?

MARINELLI: The company, having sort of focused in the last couple of years on development, was at the juncture where Continue reading →

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper.
Feb. 4, 2008

The value of venture capital investment in Ottawa fell by 31 per cent year-over-year in 2007, despite a pick-up in activity during the fourth quarter, according to a new report by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation.

Disclosed venture capital investments in Ottawa-based businesses totalled $184.5 million for all of last year, down from the $266.1 million seen in 2006. The number of deals also fell to 14 from 19.

However, the fourth quarter of 2007 saw somewhat of a revival of VC investment compared to more sluggish activity earlier in the year, with five local deals worth a total of $84.4 million. Although the dollar figure was 2.3 per cent lower than the same quarter a year earlier, the fourth quarter of 2007 was the largest of the year and more than triple the $23.2-million investment seen in the third quarter.

“There was nothing new in 2007; it’s been Continue reading →