Penny wins inaugural Courage Award

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This article was published 11/05/2017 (3262 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sitting at boardroom tables across the country, Don Penny and his partners at the accounting firm he helped launch convinced other firms to buy into their vision.

These companies placed their confidence in him, and earning their support is what the 77-year-old, who oversaw expansions at what is now MNP LLP prior to his retirement, describes as his career accomplishment.

Tonight, Penny is being honoured with Assiniboine Community College’s inaugural Courage Award.

“I don’t think it was any individual expansion, whether a purchase or a merger; the biggest success was to have people trust me and agree to join in the plans, the vision,” he said.

“They were the ones who had courage,” Penny added. “They’re giving up their own names on the scoreboard typically, and they’re meeting a bunch of people that they kind of like from a social point of view but have never been in business with.”

Penny’s decorated role in turning a Brandon-based accounting firm, formerly known as Meyers Norris Penny, into a regional giant with more than 65 offices across Canada is worthy of what ACC hopes will become an annual award celebrating people who demonstrate courage in their business, community, professional and personal lives.

“Don had the courage to take risks to pursue a vision of a different type of accounting firm, one that saw a future well beyond the comforts of Westman,” said ACC president Mark Frison in announcing the recognition.

Penny will be honoured at the Courage Award Dinner Thursday night at the Victoria Inn in Brandon.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Penny came to the conclusion that expansion was the way their firm could thrive.

“I knew that as we walked down a future road that education was going to become more costly, technology was going to become extremely expensive, and we needed to share those costs with someone to keep the costs down on an individual basis for our partners,” he said. “We needed to have more people in our organization, more owners and more investors, so up came the concept of mergers and purchases.”

The firm’s expansion story is dramatic when considering they came from meager beginnings to become one of the country’s leading accounting firm, but all along their growth has been steady.

Starting in Brandon in 1958, they grew to nearly 20 branches on the Prairies by the mid-1990s and now dot the national landscape from British Columbia to Nova Scotia with 66 offices and nearly 3,000 employees.

Their drive for expansion must have been inspired, at least early on, by Penny’s business sensibilities, too.

“Some of my partners told me I was never an accountant, but a businessman,” he said with a laugh.

He enjoyed being an accountant, he said, “but I also knew that I didn’t want to be serving clients my whole life … I also wanted to grow our business and find out where we could be.”

Penny was able to merge his businessman aspirations with the Chartered Accountant designation he received in 1963.

“I couldn’t have got there without being an accountant,” he said.

He stepped down as CEO in 1998, when MNP was the 10th-largest accounting firm in Canada, with fees of $41 million and more than 400 people as staff. Penny remained chairman of the board for three more years.

Penny said he knew then it was time to leave. Then and now, he’s buoyed by his confidence in the leadership team, citing his successors Daryl Ritchie, who remained CEO until 2015, and their current leader Jason Tuffs.

Penny’s impressed by how big MNP got, which is now based in Calgary.

“It’s mind-boggling, and we haven’t stopped yet,” he said, citing the Maritimes, Ontario and Quebec as areas where there’s potential for greater market penetration.

Penny stays in the loop with MNP’s plans. Every year, he attends the company’s annual general meeting, which is a destination event for the Canadian firm. The meeting was recently held in Miami, he said.

Through his decades in Brandon, Penny, now living in Clear Lake, was part of numerous community endeavours, including the Brandon Economic Development Board, Brandon Chamber of Commerce, YMCA and the SW Manitoba Kinsmen Club, among others.

Playing a leading role in the early years of the Brandon University Foundation is one of his highlights, he said.

He also served as chairman for the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants Board of Governors and Institute of Chartered Accountants of Manitoba.

He was invested into the Order of Canada in 2006.

Penny now spends half his year in Clear Lake and the remainder in Arizona.

Retirement has been “invigorating.” He enjoys woodturning, making bowls and pepper mills. And he emails regularly, keeping in contact with people he’s met along his travels.

Locally, he gets a lot of invites for lunch — people who want to talk business.

In Penny, they see a builder who fostered the growth of a major firm out of a small city — and someone who had the courage to take on any challenge.

“Whoever is building a business, following a dream, there are speed bumps, a couple mountains to climb,” he said.

Penny is married to his wife Sandra. They have four children and five grandchildren.

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