Royal Securities Corporation

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Royal Securities Corporation was a public stock brokerage founded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1903 by John F. Stairs, who served as its first president. It was the first brokerage opened east of Montreal, then Canada’s financial center. Stairs hired a young Max Aitken as his secretary and general manager.

After Stairs’ unexpected death in 1904, his brother George Stairs became president, but poor health allowed Aitken to gain control. Aitken hired Arthur Nesbitt to help run the firm and, in 1906, opened the Montreal branch. The company grew and formed ties to the Montreal Engineering Company, Ltd., founded by Aitken and associates in 1907, which later became part of AMEC. Denis Stairs, the son of George Stairs, would later serve as a director of Royal Securities and chairman of Montreal Engineering.

Nesbitt helped build Royal Securities and, in 1910, oversaw a large bond issue for the Price Brothers Co. In 1912 Nesbitt left to form Nesbitt, Thomson and Company. Aitken then appointed Izaak Walton Killam, who worked in his London office, as the new president. In 1919 Aitken sold the Canadian company to Killam.

In November 1920, Royal Securities bought the seven-story office building at 244 Saint James Street in Montreal, a property it owned until 1965. Under Killam, the firm became one of Canada’s leading investment houses, with a strong presence across the provinces. It played a major role in underwriting and distributing share issues for the growing pulp and paper industry and financed much of the electric power sector, as well as many government bond issues. The company traded on the Montreal, Canadian, and Toronto stock exchanges.

Killam retired in the early 1950s and died in 1955, leaving arrangements that allowed the sale of Royal Securities to his close associates. In 1969, the firm was sold to Merrill Lynch and became Merrill Lynch, Royal Securities Limited. The Royal Securities name faded as the company operated as Merrill Lynch Canada Ltd., which later sold its Canadian retail brokerage business to the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.