Update from our CEO, April 2020

Montreal, April 8, 2020 – Dear all, What a first quarter! Let me start by thanking you for your support and understanding throughout this unprecedented event. As frequently mentioned, I cannot stress enough the quality of our management team and its capacity to navigate through this adversity with strength, courage and calm. Many people on our team have not only been through 9/11, the GFC and this crisis, but we have been through this together. This should be very reassuring to all stakeholders of Montrusco Bolton (“MBI”).

As I reflect on this challenging quarter, I can proudly say that we have kept the focus where it should have been, i.e. managing and protecting as best as we can our clients and investors’ assets. Our different teams have multiple daily calls and video conferences amongst them, as well as with most of our clients. Our emergency committee has held daily conference calls for the last four weeks to make sure we are fully operational. We are finishing our 4th week with all our employees working remotely. We have tested our BRP and it works effectively; years of investments in our systems have proven to be the right decision.

We acted responsibly and today our operations were maintained for the benefit of our clients and investors. One aspect that is of concern to me is the medium-term consequence of working remotely on our employees’ morale. We have people in the organization coming from abroad and have no family here, hence their work environment became a family to them. For this reason, we are also having Microsoft Teams calls with different groups in the company per week, over and above the employee-wide call and all other ongoing communications. I am speaking to the groups on what’s happening in our business and create an atmosphere where our people can freely ask questions. I am also asking them if they need anything from me or MBI.

We have responsibly tracked our financial status on a daily basis; we have adopted some measures, none of which have affected our people financially.

Our business is more resilient than it has ever been, thanks to years of investing in our alternative segment. We have built an internal hedging mechanism with our traditional offering.

Lessons learnt so far

Be prepared: A very good example of it is our BRP investments over the years, the strenght of our investment process and the quality of our relationship with our clients and investors.

Communicate more: The temptation for many in times like these is to isolate themselves; I pressure each leaders of the business to increase their lines of communication several times a day. We must be consistent in the way we are doing as well.

Be positive: There are opportunities out there, we must adopt a longer-term view while being firmly grounded to the reality. We will be doing well if we communicate, make good decisions and execute well.

As a conclusion, I would say that each and everyone at MBI has had the opportunity to sit back and reflect on how we work, what’s important vs. what’s urgent, where do we go from here, how do we adapt to this new reality, not only from a business but also from a personal standpoint.

The points listed below are the ones that the management will be focusing on:

-Opportunity to challenge the way we used to work

-Preparing for a long-haul decline

Sylvain Boulé

President and Chief Executive Officer