Steve: Well, I am downtown, in Vancouver, and I meeting with two representatives of Zlotnik, Lamb & Company. Howie Young, let me ask you: what is your title?
Howie: I'm a financial advisor at Zlotnik, Lamb & Company. Steve: And Carrie Lyle, who is a: Carrie: Portfolio manager with Zlotnik, Lamb & Company. Howie: Now, maybe I can ask you, Howie, to give us a brief introduction to Zlotnik Lamb, and the kinds of services that you provide, and who your typical clients are.
Howie: Zlotnik Lamb and Company is a company that started approximately fifty years ago. The basic premise of that company was in the life insurance business, and Harold Zlotnik was the founder of that company, and he still is a senior partner in our firm. The initial purpose of the company was to provide live insurance to business owners in the Vancouver marketplace. That company has evolved over the years to its present form, which consists of approximately fifteen producing associates, as well as about thirty-five support staff, who support the work and the production that the companies bring in.
Steve: Now, when you say "associate," is this different from an employee? Howie: Yeah, an associate in our firm would be defined as somebody who is out actively promoting our services and bringing in revenue to the company, as compared to employees who support those associates in the daily work that they do. The company provides life insurance to business owners and individuals. It also provides employee benefits to various privately-held companies in the Vancouver marketplace, which consist of-an employee benefit would be a pension plan, or a disability insurance plan, or a health plan, that sort of thing. We also provide financial planning to professionals, which would include, basically, their pension planning. The firm, approximately five years ago, recognized that we needed to provide more investment management product to our clients, so we formed a new company called ZLC Private Investment Management, which has approximately five different investment vehicles, which are made available to our clients. And our clients would typically be higher net-worth individuals; people who typically own their own business, or they may be high-income professionals such as doctors, lawyers, accountants, that sort of thing.
Steve: Now, when you're talking about corporate benefit programs, what is the typical size or the range of sizes of your clients? Howie: Our typical-size employee benefit client would be a company that has fifty to two hundred employees. We have some that have a thousand employees, and we have some that have five, but the majority of our benefit plans have approximately fifty to two, three hundred employees.
Steve: Now, you mentioned that you have started a new division, or you started it five years ago, which is ZLC Private Investment Management, and Carrie is responsible, or one of the people responsible, for that area of activity. Carrie, would you like to explain a little bit about how you work?
Carrie: I am the acting portfolio manager, so I work with Zlotnik, Lamb & Company, various advisers and our client, and work with them in constructing their investment portfolios. We work with a number of local investment managers; our most popular investment manager is Vertex One Asset Management, and we started that relationship. They are actually involved in ZLC Private Investment Management; they own twenty-five percent of that new company. I work with the client in advising them on the different funds that they want to go into. It's been very successful; we have close to four hundred clients now, and we manage about $100 million in client assets, so it keeps us very busy and it's a great business to be in. Steve: And Vertex, which I am familiar with because I have a small position there, has been quite successful. Are you able to tell us kind of the range-I mean, compared to the market or compared to other funds-how would you describe the success of Vertex?
Carrie: Well, Vertex, their main fund is the Vertex Hedge Fund, and that was launched in February '98, and in the Vertex fund right now, there's about $275 million dollars, and it has been a fund that's been top-rated since inception. It's managed by an individual by the name of John Thiessen, who is a former top-rated U.S. equity analyst. He's very much a star in the industry, and he takes the lead on that, and it's been very popular for us.
