Bruno Kaiser: From the Old Economy to the New - A tour through finance in metals, mining and now digital health

Bruno Kaiser is CFO at Smile CDR Incl, a digital health company based in Toronto. He previously spent over 20 years in a series of investment banking leadership roles with a particular focus on the Metals and Mining Sector. We were classmates at INSEAD from 1999-2000.    Our conversation takes a journey from the old economy to the new economy – starting with Bruno’s upbringing in Canada, his path into investment banking and ultimately the field of metals and mining. We discuss valuation dynamics in this field, the evolution of the area, what it takes to deliver value as an investment banker in this arena and how the companies are responding to growing ESG demands.  We turn then to something totally different, which is the field of digital health, where Bruno is currently focused. The capacity for data and artificial intelligence to improve the user experience within healthcare is immense and we discuss what that will mean for cost structures as well as the balance between tele-health and in-person interactions. We finish with a discussion about the move from being a banker to a CFO and how that transition looked, and reflect on how bankers can sometimes be pigeon-holed and have challenges in moving to industry. Bruno discusses how this can be countered – through building strong relationships with clients, reading around the industries one works in and really focused on specific rather than generic industry problems.