For this interview, Jeffery Potvin sat down with Bernard Batt on how angel investing is Bernard’s way of giving back to the community. While majority of his assets are deployed in the real estate asset class, angel investing keeps his synapses firing and lets him understand what is out there in the community on a macro level.
Bernard also talked about his investment portfolio thesis where he shared the investment mix he has employed to get him through a recession. True to his finance background, to get through these hard times, Bernard advises companies to look at your business in an insolvency standpoint. Entrepreneurs have to look at where the cash is coming in and where the cash is going out.
Bernard is currently the Finance Director and safeguards the financial wellbeing of KEY, a provider for Admissions Consulting, Early Childhood Education, SAT and SSAT preparation and tutoring for students in BC and in China.
After university, Bernard consulted within the financial advisory group at Deloitte & Touche LLC in the restructuring practice. Bernard left Deloitte to join the first jointly TSX and SEHK-listed company as Assistant Controller, where he was based in Vancouver and Hong Kong. He returned to Vancouver where he contracted for the controller group at Goldcorp Inc., the largest gold miner by market capitalization in the world at the time. A graduate of St. George’s School, Bernard attended the University of British Columbia majoring in accounting followed by obtaining a CMA accounting designation.