- On Thursday, September 18th in Toronto, The St. Regis Hotel will play host to The ArcStone-Kingswood Growth Summit 2025, a premier, one-day growth conference.
- This invitation-only Summit brings together visionary and public companies with an audience of institutional allocators, family offices, and retail wealth advisors.
- The event builds on last year’s inaugural Summit’s success which attracted 430 delegates, and featured 30 presenting companies, 47 sponsors, and 140 one-on-one meetings.
Ascending the Heights
When we think of summits, we might recall old images of Kennedy and Soviet leader Khrushchev in Vienna, or Nixon and Chairman Mao in China, or more currently, images of Trump, Carney and other world leaders in Kananaskis at the G7. Visionary leaders, and their delegations, meeting briefly together against striking backdrops, and engaging in pivotal encounters that have the potential to transform discussions into consequential decisions, and drive outcomes that can resonate for generations.
Summits - whether political, economic, or corporate - are consequential events in their own respective ways, as determined by their attendees, agendas, and expectations going in. They compel leaders to temporarily break away from their day-to-day responsibilities and move into environments where handshakes and commitments can evolve into new beginnings and promising futures. They enable participants to exchange ideas, explore relationship potential, build trust through engagement, and align on strategies that spark prosperous breakthroughs.
The ArcStone-Kingswood Growth Summit 2025 will be held on Thursday, September 18th, at the prestigious St. Regis Toronto on Bay Street, in the heart of one of the great financial districts of the world. Against the backdrop of this impressive cityscape, visionary business leaders and ready investors will come together, along with key strategic advisors, to explore promising growth opportunities in both Canadian and U.S. market sectors.
And while there won’t be any strategic missile treaties signed, cease-fires brokered, or a joint communiqué issued at its conclusion, this capital markets leadership gathering in Canada’s business capital has the potential to dramatically impact the future fortunes of multiple companies and investors on both sides of the border, for years to come.
A New Model for Cross-Border Market Access
The ArcStone-Kingswood Growth Summit 2025 is an impacting, one-day, invitation only event that dramatically showcases its hosts’ investment banking commitment to help clients navigate complex financial landscapes and to provide them with access to global pools of institutional, family office, hedge fund, and retail capital.
ArcStone Securities and Investment Corp. (ArcStone) is a New York and Toronto based mid-market, cross-border financial services firm, founded in September 2023 following an equity investment in Arcview Capital Inc.—a New York-based FINRA broker-dealer established in 2019 and later rebranded as ArcStone Securities. CEO Michael Astone, CPA, CA, a former Managing Director and equity partner at Cantor Fitzgerald, had the goal of building a modern, high-touch investment bank that could serve companies across the US$25 million to US$5 billion market cap range – a gap left underbanked by legacy bulge brackets and Canada-only shops.
Kingswood U.S. (Kingswood) is a New York-based, FINRA/SEC-regulated platform with over 400 registered investment advisors and US$18 billion in assets under management.
In March 2024, ArcStone-Kingswood announced a strategic partnership creating one of the only full-stack, cross-border banking platforms capable of syndicating across institutions, family offices, and retail wealth networks.
We have developed a powerful equities platform with institutional sales, retail wealth coverage, and direct access to family offices, which provides us with an integrated capital markets engine that few competitors can match, delivering high-touch investment banking services for both public and private companies
— Michael Astone, CEO, ArcStone Securities and Investments Corp.
Astone adds his assessment that too many banks are running the same playbook, covering a handful of hedge funds with vanilla deals, and calling it a day.
“We’re building something fundamentally different, and ArcStone-Kingswood gives issuers access to deep U.S. retail wealth, plus institutional and family office capital, all in one lane,” he added.
The ArcStone-Kingswood platform combines deep capital markets expertise with hands-on execution across a range of strategic applications. These include equity capital markets services—such as PIPEs, IPOs, and follow-on offerings—as well as equity research, investor positioning, and curated non-deal roadshows. The team also facilitates one-on-one investor meetings, retail investor awareness campaigns, digital marketing, participation in sector days/investor conferences, and the flagship ArcStone Growth Summit. Additionally, the platform offers cross-border structuring and uplisting advisory, along with direct access to a range of capital pools throughout North America.
Astone makes the case that the ArcStone-Kingswood platform is already proving its differentiation and unlocking institutional capital from Bay Street to Wall Street.
Recent mandates span high-growth sectors such as cleantech, med-tech, blockchain, wellness, and advanced materials. With a focus on investor education and visibility, the firm supports clients throughout the full capital markets lifecycle—before, during, and after financings.
At the heart of this approach is a belief that growth companies deserve strategic storytelling, not just capital. “Whether it’s a dual-listed TSX issuer or a U.S. small cap looking to uplist to the NYSE, our model meets clients where they are, builds their narrative, and brings the right capital to the table,” Astone said.
“This summit is our statement that the future of investment banking is cross-border, multi-channel, and founder-aligned,” he added.
A Day That Moves the Needle
The ArcStone-Kingswood Growth Summit 2025 hosts underscore that their aim is to empower businesses to secure the capital needed to fuel growth, whether through strategic partnerships, acquisitions or market expansion.
“We had a lot of good feedback on our inaugural summit—for staging it in Toronto, doing it in one day, and helping bring some buzz back to Bay Street,” said Astone. “People are busy, so we focus on being high-impact and getting it done.”
He’s also eager to bring U.S. investors and clients north for the event, noting that many are looking to access investor groups that aren’t well covered by U.S. banks or alternative funds.
Astone emphasizes that attendees will include a mix of family offices, ultrahigh-net-worth individuals, accredited retail investors and institutional investors—among them, senior equity bankers from Kingswood.
“The audience – and business – we are building makes us different in that many competitor banks have moved to a model where they’re just covering hedge funds, offering warrant style financings on the back of liquidity,” said Astone.
“Very few investment banks nowadays are covering family offices, you know, CEO’s who’ve had exits for a US$100 million or US$200 million that are now writing checks into growth companies and really acting as an alternative pool of capital,” he added.
The 2025 Summit will feature approximately 25 presenting companies and more than 15 additional issuers conducting one-on-one meetings. Leveraging MeetMax software, the event offers a curated investor experience with 15-minute pre-booked sessions—giving CEOs, VPs and corporate development leads a focused opportunity to connect directly with investors.
According to ArcStone, and expanding upon the 2024 Summit foundation, investors represented by a deeper cross-border institutional bench will have the chance to meet with executive management from private and public companies across a broader sector footprint including technology, AI, energy transition, critical minerals, wellness, fintech, and crypto infrastructure. Attending companies will span private issuers planning 2026 IPOs to publicly traded names exploring follow-ons and uplistings.
Said Astone, “Companies undergoing expansion and interested in exploring listings on prominent US and Canadian exchanges - including NYSE, OTC Markets, TSX, Cboe, and CSE - will also have a valuable opportunity to access, pitch and connect with an array of diverse investors intent on deploying capital into high-growth opportunities.”
The programming will almost entirely take place on Sept. 18 at The St. Regis Toronto, featuring a networking breakfast, CEO and executive presentations, investor panel discussions, a networking lunch, pre-scheduled one-on-one meetings, a post-market cocktail reception and an invitation-only VIP dinner the evening prior for select issuers and capital partners.
There aren’t many partner-led investment banks left—especially ones willing to back founders early, show up in the trenches, and build long-term capital relationships, so we are ushering in a new chapter for independent banking
— Michael Astone, CEO, ArcStone Securities and Investments Corp.
Expanding Bay Street’s Reach and Relevance
Despite being rooted in Bay Street, ArcStone views its value proposition as global.
“Toronto is a gateway to North America, not just a domestic market,” said Astone. “We believe Canadian growth companies should think globally, access U.S. capital earlier, and play on a bigger stage.”
He also speaks passionately to a more expanded sentiment of purpose.
“It’s not every day that you can build a cross-border financial services firm, and I think that the more we can evolve Bay Street, it will be to the betterment of Canada, because we need to have entrepreneurs in order to succeed in this new world,” Astone said.
“The old economy is being disrupted by AI, by tariffs, and global shifts. If we don’t evolve and get capital into the hands of founders, Canada risks falling behind” he added.
Now wouldn’t that be a communiqué for the business and investment leaders attending this particular summit to jointly sign onto.
To learn more about ArcStone Securities and Investment Corp. and Kingswood U.S., please visit the web sites provided, or follow them on social media:
