Evermore Capital pledges to donate revenues toward Ukraine aid

For Myron Genyk, co-founder and CEO of Canadian asset management firm Evermore Capital Inc. in Toronto, the crisis in Ukraine is personal.

With relatives and friends in the war-torn country, Mr. Genyk, of Ukrainian descent, said he worries about their safety. That's why Evermore will donate 100% of its revenues in March, April and May to help with humanitarian efforts, he said.

The new asset management firm on Feb. 23 launched Canada's first target-date ETFs — eight Evermore Retirement ETFs, Mr. Genyk noted.

"Although the company just started, there was no hesitation in providing support to humanitarian aid in Ukraine," said Canadian-born Mr. Genyk. Evermore will announce the amount of its financial contributions on a monthly basis, he added. Evermore also will support the Canadian Red Cross' Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal and the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal, which was established by the Ukraine Canadian Congress and Canada-Ukraine Foundation.

Current assets under management of the Evermore Retirement ETFs total roughly C$10 million ($7.8 million), Mr. Genyk said. Evermore does not have any other products or services at this time, he added.

While Mr. Genyk said he has been able to communicate with some of his friends and family members in Ukraine by texting, there are some others he cannot reach.

"A female cousin of mine and her children were able to flee to Poland," he said. "But her husband remains in the Ukraine, as almost all men between the ages of 18 and 60 cannot leave the country as they are needed for the war effort."

Mr. Genyk's parents arrived in Canada after World War II, he said, in 1948, to form part of what would eventually become one of the world's largest Ukrainian communities.

According to Canadian government statistics, some 1.4 million people in Canada are of Ukrainian descent — the second largest such diaspora after only Russia.

"Ukrainians have been in Canada for well over a century," Mr. Genyk noted. "The first wave of immigrants were farmers who worked the land in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta."

Mr. Genyk, who speaks fluent Ukrainian, last visited the country in 2019, with one of his children. "Ukraine is a beautiful country, and I felt very much at home there," he said. "It is just unimaginable what has happened there now. I just could not believe it when I heard about the invasion."

Before co-founding Evermore in 2021, Mr. Genyk worked at BlackRock Asset Management Canada Ltd., where he was responsible for overseeing ETF markets as vice president-ETF capital markets. Before that, he spent more than 10 years at National Bank of Canada, as a structurer, trader and salesman on the derivatives desk.