Another year behind us: time to review what has been and plan for what is coming.  When we took our young kids on vacation, at the end of each day we would ask them for a review: what was the rose of the day, what was the thorn, and then what were they looking forward to the next day…what was the bud?  We weren’t too surprised by the results of our poll, but it was fun to hear what they had to say.  You may not be surprised by my year in review, but I do hope it will be fun to hear what I have to say anyway.

This year was a doozie, suffice it to say.  Making my rounds at all the holiday Private Equity events, ‘choppy’ was the predominant sentiment shared by my colleagues.  The advisor part of the community felt the choppiness more acutely as we typically have high fixed-cost models and when work is too light, profits disappear.  Our clients have been a bit cranky this year as well.  Despite being three years into a spike in interest rates and seven months into a trade war, the bid-ask spread seems to persist.  I am not sure who tracks broken processes, but we have been part of more than ever.  It has to be frustrating trying to make deals when the economy is so uncertain and the sellers don’t often recognize it.  For the portfolios they have, depending on the sector, it can be hard to manage through the uncertainty, harder still to make investments in it and hardest yet to be in the fifth year of a hold of a company that is just not ready to go out to market.   The smaller, more scrappy funds, especially in certain sectors, have found a way to get deals done; multiples are lower, there is some asymmetry in sophistication and information and, frankly, the principals are out there being scrappy.  The last quarter has brought on a deluge of deals and work, so this thorn MAY also be classified as a bud.  But the thing about buds is that until they blossom, it is hard to know for sure.

The geopolitical situation weighs on all of us.  Some of it impacts business directly and some just eats away at us as humans while we are trying to do business.  If we compare the world today to what it was in 1943 or 1916 or, frankly,1968 it is not in bad shape at all: less war, less proportional hunger and poverty, more human rights both in beleaguered far-away nations and for diverse populations close to home.  There are even some bright spots in the fight against climate change.  But fascism, totalitarianism and violence are raging.  Smart, centrist politics are being chased away by alt-right lunatics and far-left morons. Wars abound in Sudan, Gaza and the Ukraine, with millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead.  Sudan is sadly ignored in the media. The Gazan war has led to a surge in crushing antisemitism.  Ukraine’s highest-potential ally is pushing them to accept a suicidal deal that emboldens a brutal dictator.  In Western nations there is an increase in bigotry of all types which is somehow celebrated by the alt-right as justified retaliation for wokeness. Maybe geopolitics would be seen as a thorn in any year-end review except maybe one written in December of 1945 but suffice it to say the world kind of sucks right now.

Big-Tech has the potential to bring the rosiest of roses.  Technology is the key to productivity and prosperity.  There is so much innovation in using data to solve complex problems in medicine, agriculture, and the use of energy.  At the same time technology in communication is doing more harm than good.  Social media has robbed us of our ability to learn and communicate, and enfeebled the free press, both of which are what we need to turn back the tide on our current geopolitical state. AI, AI, AI.  Too much ink on this topic.  I will point us to one of my favourite expressions: ‘may you live in interesting times’.  The advent itself of AI does bring about interesting times.  The innovation in many fields will be breathtaking, and the disruption in our economy will be astounding, often positive.  But the pervasion of AI in human expression will bring us to the most boring and uninspired times of all.  Too many will make the trade-off in favor of time savings and error reduction instead of originality.  We will lack truly original content, and when we get it, we will be suspicious of it, or won’t recognize it.  Everyone’s emails will look and feel the same as they will have been auto-corrected with the same rules.  As an experiment, we asked AI to write my year-end letter, taking into account past letters written, current news and posts I have written throughout the year.  The result could not have been more banal.  Like cardboard.  I have committed to writing every published word myself but as we see on LinkedIn and other platforms many lack the heart and soul I have.  Presentation documents will pull the best practices on the web and create something that is ‘good enough’ for the time spent.  Art purveyors will eventually succumb to being bot-enhanced.  People will lose the muscle to think deeply.  So, AI is probably a bit of a rose and a bit of a thorn.  It has a bud in there in some cases, but our ability to control and regulate it will determine how beautifully it blooms.

Daily, the biggest thorn in my side is the inability to move around our cities.  In Montreal and Toronto, commute times keep going up.  Urban planners are mired in a frenzy of what they must see as progressivism but shows up as a productivity crusher.  Construction projects are poorly coordinated and always late.  Bike lanes are great for 26-year olds working on their next fitness goal but, for those of us with full lives that include getting kids to hockey practice and parents to doctor’s appointments, the car is still the only way.  Constantly shrinking the space we get to drive in and reducing the speed limit is killing us.  Uber drivers are underpaid and under-skilled, but finding a real taxi is often too much of a bother.  And in any earthly locale other than China, getting transit built in less than a lifespan seems impossible.  Adding immigrants to western nations is needed to balance our age pyramid but bringing them all to the big cities makes everything more congested.  I don’t see any leaders managing this at all.

‘Come on Mark, even a cynical guy like you must have some bright spots to rejoice over? Something great must have happened this year.’  I am not really a half-full kind of guy, but there are a few shoutouts I have to make.

My team killed it this year: they rode through these choppy waters on a boat steered by their cranky captain and didn’t say boo.  In a tough year, we managed to hold all our key staff, relaunch our brand, create a couple of new strategic relationships and deepen others.  And we are working on some big things we hope to announce in the first quarter of 2026.

Young people! I hate when people talk about their kids on here but mine are so cool – not because of some accomplishment I am going to brag about (you’re welcome) but because I see the way they think about the issues of the day and manage themselves.  It is easy to say social media is ruining children, but I get to converse with my own and many others who are bucking the trend.  They are all we have to hope for.

Our public service providers.  In healthcare, I have dealt with a few issues that I won’t share (my family and I are fine), and I was served by many caring and highly competent professionals. When urgent situations are presented, they are met as needed. We need so much work to make our system productive and efficient (understatement of the year), but we should not diss the providers as we revamp the system in which they operate.  In education, it is a folly of the rich to say that they send their kids to private school because, for them to be successful, they have to… it is because they want to, and because they can.  Every study proves that their kids would be just fine in public schools.  These public schools are underfunded and don’t look pretty.  Some politics impede meritocracy in staff management.  But having gone through one and a half high-school runs with my kids in the public system, I see the commitment and skill of these educators.  They work hard with little resource, and they care about my kids.  It inspires me and makes me grateful.

Resilience.  Sounds like a platitude, especially for a guy like me.  The Canadian economy, despite how tough it has been and how choppy it has been in some sectors, is doing better than we would have expected.  Naysayers are predicting doom is right around the corner. It may be. It always may be.  But I see a whole lot of pluck in the business leaders I serve and I am impressed.  We are getting it done as best we can.

The Influencers.  Tucker Carlson is out there along with a bunch of other loons.  Hate and ignorance pervade.  But there is a giant cadre of smart, thoughtful voices out there trying to steer the conversation toward a place of centrist reason.  Scott Galloway is not right on every single issue but he is thoughtful, data-based and driven by what he genuinely sees as right and wrong.  I use him as just one example, but there are so many.  It must feel like shouting into the loudest windstorm but the other alternative is just to roll over.

In good times and bad, I always have hope for the future so let me focus on some buds.

Our new Prime Minister.  I am not sold on him yet. I am worried about some of his positions and his ability to get a good trade deal done is not yet clear.  But broadly speaking, he seems to be governing from the centre, which no doubt frustrates his opponents as he steals their ideas.  I am hopeful that we will accelerate infrastructure spending as it is badly needed.  Maybe we will even join the 20th century (sic) and get high-speed rail in the Quebec-Windsor corridor (footnote: my return flight to Montreal tomorrow is only 1186.50 CAD, while the average return flight between Paris and Munich is 420).

The US judicial system.  I have seen times where they rolled over, especially at the very highest level, and I have seen times where they did their job.  Unlike the sycophantic Republican senate, I still have hope for Federal judges in the US.

The UN.  Ok I had to put a joke in here.  They are nothing but pompous hypocrisy the world over.  What a sham.

The majority of Americans.  I do business all over the US and spend a chunk of my winter in a sunshine state.  So many people go out of their way to thank me for coming, and reassure me that they still love us and that they are not represented by the actions of their leader.  I can’t be sure we will get a great trade deal now, but as I said when this whole saga started, I am hopeful that we will once again emerge as the greatest friends and neighbours the world has known.

Clean energy.  Even with a carbon-loving administration in Washington, the tide is turning on a new way.  If you look at the scale of China’s investments into solar (it’s the cost, stupid) and the number of utilities reinvesting in nuclear, it brings a measure of hope.  Some may say too little, too late.  I say better late than never.  We have a long way to go to align on the threat of climate change and the path to improve the situation, but the latest signs are positive.

Save a few snarky comments here and there, this will be it for me in 2025.  I will take some downtime with my precious children and then with my precious self.   I will write my goals for 2026 and come back ready to fight.  I don’t know which battles I will win and which I will lose but the ones I choose to fight I will do so with my full heart. Relentlessly.  Happy Holidays to one and all.