Kevin O’Leary closes failed mortgage startup

As retail investors continue to suffer via some of his lagging mutual funds, Kevin O’Leary’s brand took another hit last month when he agreed to “surrender” his mortgage licence to provincial regulators.

This came as a surprise, frankly, even to me.

It has been only 18 months since KO put his omnipresent profile behind this new business venture via YouTube. As you may recall, it took several years before investors began to flee his mutual funds in the wake of poor returns in several key asset classes (see prior post “O’Leary Funds appear to shed another 20% of assets in 2012” Jan. 27-13). Since the LCBO was able to market O’Leary-branded wine, it came as no shock that Team Kevin figured that Canadians would also buy a mortgage from KO. Apparently, they didn’t do their market research. As with the mutual fund caper, Canadians expect some value add.

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