When Daniel Bain founded Thornmark Asset Management Inc. in 1998, he wanted to provide investment-management services using his own Value-Shift philosophy. Today, it remains a foundation of his investment process, and his company has reached $60 million in assets under management. Dive into the numbers to find out how.
1987
When Bain began his studies at Queens University in 1987, he had no idea what he wanted to study, so he asked a professor what discipline was most highly regarded there. The answer was economics, and Bain chose that—wisely, as it turns out. “My choice was pure luck, but I loved economics, and it’s been the foundation of everything I’ve been doing since I graduated in 1991,” he says.
$350,000
After graduating, Bain began working for Thornmark Holdings, a private real estate development company with a family-office investment-management business. Early on, he saw a problem with the family-office business: “They had relatively concentrated portfolios but were already in a very illiquid real estate business,” he says. Bain became the proverbial bee in the firm’s bonnet, campaigning for a better allocation of its portfolios, and in 1993 he received $350,000 to manage himself. “I looked at it as an investment-management challenge and decided to live and die by my own sword,” says Bain, whose portfolio ended up performing well.