Richard Rooney, CFA, FCPA
Vice Chair and Co-Founder
Highlights
- Portfolio Manager for EAFE equities
- Former Chief Investment Officer (20+ years)
- 35+ years of combined professional experience
After many years of education and practice in the investment management field, Richard read some essays by Warren Buffett and was smitten. Here was someone who actually carried out Einstein’s instruction that things should be as simple as possible but no simpler! Trying to apply this simple and sensible approach to investing, finding like-minded people to apply it globally, and writing about it and discussing it, have been the best parts of his day job ever since.
As Chief Investment Officer of Burgundy for over 20 years, Richard helped build an investment department that is supportive of thoughtful risk-taking, humble and dispassionate about acknowledging and learning from mistakes, and that bases its decisions on carefully marshalled evidence and strict valuation work.
Burgundy Experience
- Joined Burgundy in 1995
- Appointed President, Chief Investment Officer in 1997
- Appointed Vice Chair and Co-Founder in 2020
Relevant Experience
- 35+ years of combined professional experience
- Experience includes positions at: Price Waterhouse, Sun Life, AMI Partners
Education
- CFA charterholder
- Fellow of CPA Ontario
- MBA, Richard Ivey School of Business, Western University
- Bachelor of Arts, University of Toronto
Memberships and Community
- Chair of Board of Directors and of the Investment Committee, Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation
- Member of Governance Committee, former Chair of Board of Governors, Stratford Shakespeare Festival
- Trustee Emeritus and former President, Art Gallery of Ontario Foundation
- Trustee Emeritus, Art Gallery of Ontario
- Member, CPA Ontario
- Member, CFA Society Toronto
- Member, CFA Institute
POSTS FROM THIS AUTHOR
Foundation Stewardship: A Board Member’s Perspective
The Journal | January 2023
For foundations and endowments to be successful, they must be managed, sustained, and grown over the long term. However, long-term planning can be challenging, especially during periods of volatility...
Remarks from Richard Rooney: 2020 in Review
The Journal | January 2021
Using the three pillars of knowledge, quality and scarcity, Richard Rooney reflects on the lessons that can be gleaned from an unprecedented year, and how Burgundy will position itself for...
Two Proverbs
The Journal | May 2020
In late 1984, in the first weeks of my career in the capital markets, I took part in a discussion about the world economy. The oil patch was in crisis and...
Investing in a Plague Year
The Journal | April 2020
A few days into the market maelstrom of March 2020, I was sitting in front of my TV watching the financial channels. Really unbelievable things were happening. Equities plunged and soared...
What we need
The Journal | March 2020
With far too much alone time this past week, and in response to the good questions you have been asking about this crisis, I developed the following narrative to convey...
Where we are now
The Journal | March 2020
At Burgundy, we pride ourselves on doing meticulous research and owning excellent companies run by trustworthy people. As quality/value investors, we often find the two parts of our philosophy...
Creating a Culture of Responsibility
The Journal | December 2019
Richard Rooney, President and CIO, shares his thoughts on how Burgundy’s culture has enabled its sustained success and discusses the Investment Team’s approach to collaboration and accountability...
Ships that Sail Best in a Light Wind
The Journal | November 2019
An update with Richard Rooney, President and Chief Investment Officer. Richard discusses the current economic environment and the motivations behind central bank monetary policy...
Naïve Optimism
The Journal | June 2019
This year’s Burgundy Forum – our 20th annual Client Day event – recognized the careful balance between rationalism, cynicism and optimism as it pertains to behaviour and diversity of thought. K...
Who Pays?
The Journal | January 2019
Over a year ago, Burgundy did a complete reassessment of our research costs based on new financial rules from Europe called MiFID II. Historically, brokerage firms have incurred expenses on...
The Mathematics of Down Markets
The Journal | December 2018
One of the hallmarks of value investing is that its practitioners cultivate a state of mind where their attitude is the inverse of the market’s. As bull markets advance...
Tough October
The Journal | November 2018
It was another tough October—famously the most difficult month of the year for the stock market. There once was a rational explanation for this phenomenon. In the old days,...
Smart or Stupid? That Depends …
The Journal | July 2018
The following speech was presented by Richard Rooney, President and CIO, at this year’s Client Day. It has been lightly edited and condensed for this blog entry. Value investing...
The Quality-value Tug of War
The Journal | July 2016
By most accounts, the last few years have been a very tough time for deep-value investors. Persistent slow world economic growth and prevailing uncertainties about fundamental macroeconomic issues lik...
The Chief Hazard to Investors
The Journal | May 2016
“The risk of paying too high a price for good-quality stocks – while a real one – is not the chief hazard confronting the average buyer of securities. Observation over many years...
Calculating Margins of Safety
The Journal | December 2014
During the annual Burgundy Information Session via conference call this Fall, I was asked to explain the concept of margin of safety. Here is my response. With every company we...
Confessions of a Buffetteer
The View | July 2014
The value investing tent is inhabited by several different tribes: the Orthodox, the Bears, the Gold Bugs and the “Buffetteers.” These groups are united by a common admiration for Ben...
Us & Them
The Journal | April 2014
In 2011, I presented my view on high frequency traders (HFTs) at Burgundy’s annual Client Day. I had been unable to obtain very much information in early 2011 on who the...
Beyond the Returns: Selecting a Money Manager (Part III)
The Journal | July 2013
In Part I and Part II, I looked at some money manager characteristics beyond performance that should result in an overall positive client experience, and used Warren Buffett as the...
Beyond the Returns: Selecting a Money Manager (Part II)
The Journal | June 2013
In my last post, I introduced a thought experiment: what would be the ideal situation for the investment of your family wealth if you had started a generation ago, and...
Beyond the Returns: Selecting a Money Manager
The Journal | May 2013
When selecting a manager, most people start, logically enough, with the returns. That is the money manager’s product, after all. But all too often the disclosure that past performance...
Surviving Success: Investment Management and Value Added
The View | October 2012
The job we do as trustees is one of the hardest I can think of. I say we, because I have served as trustee on several pension and endowment funds....
Sources of Volatility in Equity Markets
The Journal | March 2012
Since the world financial crisis began in mid-2008, high-quality investments have greatly outperformed lower-quality ones. It hasn’t been a straight line outperformance by any means, given the bouts...
Shakespeare on Investing
The Journal | January 2012
At the very outset of Shakespeare’s least loveable comedy, The Merchant of Venice, Antonio is telling his friends of his depression, and how difficult it is for him to...
The Year of the Turkey
The View | June 2009
Have you ever watched the “talking head” interview shows on financial channels like CNBC? Usually they are structured with several guests who agree with each other, and one who has...
A Record of Failure: Fund Managers as Shareholders
The View | September 2003
About four years ago, I gave a speech to the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants’ Financial Reporting Conference in which I examined the role of the auditor and accountant in...
Rooney’s Believe It or Not
The View | June 2003
I’m sure when you opened your first-quarter report you had a moment when you thought (among other things), “I wish I hadn’t been in stocks last year.” And...
Wise Passivity, Cautious Opportunism
The View | November 2001
“‘To enjoy the benefits of time’ was one of the chief maxims of the statecraft of the age. Time untied so many knots, cancelled the necessity for so many desperate...
A Year of Living Dangerously
The View | May 2001
When you saw the title of my presentation today, I expect you thought we were going to review last year’s peculiar markets. That would have given us the opportunity...
Indexers, Arbitrageurs and Organ Donors
The View | December 2000
The investment strategy that has been the biggest winner with clients in the last quarter century is neither a growth strategy nor a value strategy. It is index investing, known...
Horatio’s Answer
The View | April 2000
There is a conversation that takes place in Act I, Scene V of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that has been running through my mind lately. The exchange is between Horatio, an...
The Ham in the Sandwich
The View | October 1999
Ladies and gentlemen, you have been drawn here under false pretences. Your program agenda made reference to our firm’s February publication, and implied that I would be referring to...
Unforced Errors
The View | July 1999
In the aftermath of our last View from Burgundy, two things became obvious to us. One is that our readers are ardent cinema fans, since our initial lapse in casting...
We’re Mad as Hell
The View | February 1999
In the 1976 film Network, Albert Finney gave a riveting performance as a TV anchorman who blew a gasket and began to deliver angry tirades on his nightly news show. His...
Stealing a Fortune
The View | August 1998
It is not too much of a stretch to say that the biggest change in management behaviour over the past 20 years has been the transformation of senior managers from stewards...
A Capitalist Hotbed
The View | May 1998
One Canadian province has led all others in small- and mid-cap stock market performance over the past two years. Two of the three top performing Canadian small-cap mutual funds over...
The Sun Also Rises
The View | March 1998
At the end of 1989, Japan was flying high. Its economic model was considered by many to be the best in the world. Under the benign and extraordinarily competent direction of...
Selling the Downside
The View | November 1997
It is welcome news that the Canadian government has almost eliminated its deficit, but now we must deal with the very high debts that have been built up over the...
Great Investors
The View | July 1997
One of the main purposes of The View from Burgundy is to inform our readers of sound investment practices that we think enhance the possibility of long-term success. One of...
The Crying Game
The View | December 1996
Readers of The View from Burgundy are aware that capital allocation is one of the issues we constantly refer back to in our analysis of companies. The one thing above...
Second Class Owners
The View | September 1996
After our analysis of the relationship between reliably rising earnings and stock market performance in the “Capital Punishment” issue, our researchers at Burgundy got really ambitious and decided...
Capital Punishment Part II
The View | March 1996
In our December 1995 edition of The View from Burgundy, we shared with you some interesting data regarding the 728 Canadian public companies in the Stock Guide database for fiscal year-ends closest...
Doing It Right
The View | December 1995
In previous issues of The View from Burgundy, we justifiably have tended to be hard on managements that have failed in what we consider to be arguably their primary function:...
Errors of Omission
The View | August 1995
Readers of The View from Burgundy are perhaps aware of the importance we place on the principle that shareholders are owners of fractions of a business, rather than builders of...