Ninepoint Partners

Office address: 200 Bay Street Suite 2700, PO Box 27 Toronto, ON M5J 2J1
Website: www.ninepoint.com
Year established: 2017
Company type: investment management
Employees: 90
Expertise: alternative investments, private debt, and private credit
Parent company: N.A.
CEO and key people: James Fox and John Wilson, co-CEOs and Managing Partners
Financing status: -

Ninepoint Partners is a Toronto-based investment firm that focuses on alternative investments. The firm was established in 2017 by John Wilson and James Fox, who are also its CEOs. Ninepoint has $8 billion in assets and institutional contracts, making it one of the largest independent asset management firms in Canada.

History of Ninepoint Partners

Ninepoint Partners was the result of a management buyout at Sprott Asset Management LP led by James Fox and John Wilson. A new company, first called SPR & Co LP, was formed to handle the portfolio management side of the business. A few months later, SPR & Co LP was renamed Ninepoint Partners.

The company’s name comes from the idea of a nine-point puzzle. The challenge is to use only four straight lines to connect all the dots on a 3x3 grid. The way to do this and solve the puzzle is for the lines to go beyond the grid or “outside the box”. One could say that this is also how Ninepoint Partners operates within the investment management industry.

Products and Services of Ninepoint Partners

Ninepoint Partners offers these products and services to investment advisors and institutional investors:

• alternative strategies
• mutual funds
• exchange traded fund (ETF) series

Culture at Ninepoint Partners

Ninepoint Partners takes pride in thinking out of the box, which it has branded as “alt thinking”. According to Ninepoint, everything they do is all about alt thinking - “from the education we offer to help you make better investment decisions, to the investment solutions we develop to better address the challenges you face in a complex investment environment.”

The company has also made strides in fulfilling its ESG commitments. In 2021, Ninepoint Partners started offering carbon-neutral Bitcoin ETFs. It partnered with Carbon X to help analyze and offset carbon emissions and with the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute to assess the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies.

Under this plan, Ninepoint Partners also supports forest conservation projects – all part of the firm’s pledge to support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Ninepoint Partners is a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment.

About Ninepoint Partners CEOs James Fox and John Wilson

James Fox and John Wilson are the CEOs and founders at Ninepoint Partners.

Fox leads on business development, capital raising and marketing. Before setting up Ninepoint Partners, James was the President of Sprott Asset Management LP and Managing Director of Sprott Private Wealth. He has a degree in Finance and Economics from the University of Western Ontario and an MBA from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.

Wilson is responsible for the firm’s investment and research initiatives. Before Ninepoint Partners, he was CEO, co-CIO and Senior Portfolio Manager at Sprott Asset Management. He also held leadership roles at Cumberland Private Wealth Management, DDX Capital Partners, RBC Capital Markets, and UBS Canada. He holds a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Queen’s University and an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Future at Ninepoint Partners

In describing their company name and the puzzle that inspired it, John Wilson said, ““The idea is consistent with the attributes that we’re about[…]. Our role in the industry is to create innovative investment solutions that diversify peoples’ risk or return streams away from where the bulk of the industry sits. That’s what advisors come to us for and that’s where we’ve had a lot of success.” In thinking out of the box, Ninepoint Partners has found success, and will continue to do so in the years ahead.