Glen Shear has over 30 years’ experience in financial services, investment banking, investor relations, financial management and reporting, operations oversight and risk management. He has brought extensive expertise to for-profit and non-profit companies in the real estate, investment, medical, technology and cannabis sectors.
Mr. Shear received an MBA from the University of Chicago (Chicago, IL), and a BA from Brandeis University (Waltham, MA, Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa). His career began with a large publicly-listed Canadian real estate company, Cadillac Fairview, and he then worked at Chase Manhattan Bank, where he gained real estate and corporate banking experience. Mr. Shear was a Principal of Ernst & Young, where he assumed a senior management role in the liquidation of Standard Trust, a major Canadian lender. He was also a Principal at Cole & Partners, a corporate finance and valuation firm in Toronto, advising owners and senior executives regarding strategic partnerships, acquisitions, dispositions, management buy-outs and public market options.
Mr. Shear was Executive Director of Canada’s leading investment bank, CIBC World Markets. He was involved in over $3.2 billion of successful equity transactions, including initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, portfolio acquisitions and other advisory assignments. He was also co-founder and CFO of Israel Technology Acquisition Corp. – Israel’s first special purpose acquisition corporation – which raised $36 million through a NASDAQ listing, and later merged with IXI Mobile. He raised substantial capital for technology-focused VC funds, was CFO of an Israel-based biotech firm, Glycominds, and raised pre-IPO funds for Redhill Biotechnology.
For nearly 6 years, Mr. Shear was Co-Founder and CFO of Garden Remedies, Inc., one of the largest and most successful vertically-integrated cannabis firms in Massachusetts; it began as a non-profit corporation, and eventually became for-profit. Mr. Shear was also a senior executive to 3 global cannabis platforms operating in Portugal, Germany, Israel and Australia, and a Strategic Advisor to BioHarvest Sciences (CSE: BHSC), a plant cell technology platform operating at industrial scale.
Mr. Shear works with Venture Growth Partners and directs his own strategic advisory and investment firm, Glenco Development Corporation, to provide outsourced CFO services, including advising private and public companies, and high-net worth investors in the US, Canada, and Israel regarding strategy, financing, investor relations, mergers and acquisitions and investing.
