Obituary - Peter Cundill

Investment manager helped shape industry.

The celebrated investor Peter Cundill has died, but his influence will continue to be felt in his contributions to financial world, to philanthropy and to the broader community.

He died in London where he lived for the past two decades, on Jan. 24. He was 72. There's always something to Do: The Peter Cundill Investment Approach (McGill Queen's Univesity Press), completed not long before his death, is set to be released on Feb. 26.

The Cundill International Prize in History, established by his foundation in 2008 at his alma mater; McGill University , remains the world's largest non-fiction historical literature prize. The 2010 winner was noted British historian and Oxford University professor Diarmaid MacCuloch, for A History of Christianity:The First Three Thousand Years. The prize was intended to encourage the writing of history for a general audience and, in explaining his affinity to history Cundill once said:"I'm an investment researcher of finance, and I think there's an analogy between the two disciplines - both study the past to understand the present and predict the future." As well, the Cundill Foundation will continue to support "a wide range of charities and educational and enterprise gifts to young people," according to a memorial notice that appeared in The Gazette and other publications.

Cundill was a graduate of Lower Canada College, where he played football and basketball. He earned a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill in 1960, became a chartered accountant and then went into the investment business; he worked in Montreal and Vancouver; where in the early 1970s he was president of AGF Vancouver Investment Management Ltd. and established his flagship fund, the Cundill Value Fund, in 1974 and his own firm three years later.

In his investment philosophy, Cundill was known as an advocate of American economist and investor Benjamin Graham's value approach, which generally involves buying securities whose shares appear undervalued. Proponents of value investing includes Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett; indeed, in 2007 Buffett observed that Cundill had the kind of credentials he was looking for in his search for his company's next chief investment officer.

In a column about Cundill's death, a personal finance columnist at the Toronto Star called him "a renowned value investor and mutual fund manager who helped shake the Canadian money management industry."

Roseman, who interviewed him in 1988 and again in 2003, described him as "lean and bald, with piercing blue eyes."

Cundill who liked to challenge himself physically, was a runner who completed 22 marathons. He was a voracious reader and he loved to travel - a good thing since he was often on the road for work for more than six months of the year.

In one of many distinctions during his career in investment management, Cundill was honored in 2001 at the Canadian Investment Award with the Analyst's Choice Career Achievement Award in recognition of his performance and lifetime contribution to the financial community.

In 2006, he learned he suffered from an untreatable neurological condition and sold the firm that carried his name to Mackenzie Financial, with whom he's had a strategic alliance since 1998; he became chairman emeritus of Mackenzie Cundill in 2009.

Cundill is survived by his stepdauther, Evelyn, two grandchildren, a stepson, Roger, and his brother, Grier. He was predeceased by his wife, Joanie.

Source: Susan Schwartz, The Gazette.