CHARLIE Spiring is so confident his newest executive will help take Wellington West Capital to new heights, he has given him shares in the company, the presidency and half of the CEO job.

The founder and soon-to-be co-CEO of Wellington West announced yesterday that Kevin Kelly will join the Winnipeg-based firm on Jan. 3. The move for the 49-year-old marks his return to Canada after spending the last six years as president of Fidelity Brokerage Co. in Boston, the biggest division of the world's largest mutual fund company, Fidelity Investments.

Spiring said Kelly's reputation and Bay Street connections will prove invaluable in growing the firm. Together, they have revised Wellington West's growth targets from $7 billion in assets under management (AUM) by the end of next year to $10 billion. Wellington West currently manages about $4.5 billion in assets.

"We see this business growing dramatically over the next five to 10 years. There's no reason why you couldn't see this company rival other national firms out there in terms of size," Kelly said in an interview from Toronto, where he will be based.

Spiring said Wellington West will set out to reach those targets through a combination of recruiting senior brokers at other, primarily bank-owned, firms and acquiring smaller dealers -- with six to 10 brokers each -- that lack the scale necessary to compete in today's market.

Spiring said he had no qualms giving up some responsibilities, power and company shares to get Kelly.

"This is my dream. I've been looking how to do it for a year and I've thought it out very carefully. I still want to maintain my own retail brokerage book (which is the biggest at the firm). I need to have somebody helping with the growth. I can't work 16-hour days forever. Now I'll be able to cruise back to 10-hour days," he said.

It's not as if Wellington West has been in slow growth mode lately. At the beginning of 2000, the company had just $400 million in AUM. Two years later, that figure had risen to $1.35 billion.

Effective formula

"The formula Charlie and his team have been using has been very effective. I don't see a need to change the way they're running the business, but now we have an opportunity to take it to warp speed and make it happen faster," Kelly said.

Spiring and Kelly are well known to each other, having worked together at Midland Capital, the precursor to Midland Walwyn, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Dan Richards, president of Strategic Imperatives, a Toronto-based consulting firm to the financial services industry, called the signing a "huge win" for Wellington West.

"With the senior financial community in Canada, Kevin brings huge credibility and visibility. His involvement gives Wellington West instant higher credibility," he said.

Richards said Kelly has a "great" track record in all of his roles, most notably in turning Fidelity's Canadian operations around from $5.5 billion in AUM in 1995 to more than $30 billion in AUM five years later.