Rob Cherun and Erik Mikkelsen were already living their dream, working in investment banking, management consulting and real estate private equity out of New York, Toronto and Los Angeles. But that wasn’t enough for Mr. Cherun, who enrolled in his MBA at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in 2008. There he met professor Joel Peterson, founder of private equity firm Peterson Partners and current chairman of JetBlue Airways Corp. Mr. Cherun took Mr. Peterson’s class and prepared a report on the value of investing in Canada. The document was compelling, noting that Canada has the world’s second-largest oil reserves, large timber reserves, a strong dollar, and low debt-to-GDP. More important for private equity investors, he found that Canada has about a quarter of the money chasing smaller companies than in the U.S., on a per-capita basis.
