Bio

Riyaz specializes in financial transactions, shareholder actions, crisis communications and media relations. Our clients benefit from his extensive experience working with public companies, boards of directors, shareholders and the media. Riyaz specializes in reducing complex problems and messages to their most fundamental elements. He has been involved with over 85 shareholder actions, and dozens of hostile M&A transactions. Riyaz has led Bayfield’s team in mounting or defending against shareholder actions in the United States and Canada, at over two dozen public companies including: Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF: NYSE), InnVest REIT (INN.U: TSX), Altera Corp (ALTR: Nasdaq), Rovi Corp (ROVI: Nasdaq), Oplink (OLNK: Nasdaq), Genesis Land Development (GDC: TSX), Silicon Image (SIMG: Nasdaq), Central Gold Trust (CGT.U: TSX), Zale Corp (ZLC: NYSE), and Tuckamore Capital (TX: TSX). Riyaz also leads the firm’s representation of investment funds including Engaged Capital, Orange Capital, Polar Securities, TIG Advisors and Waterton Global. Before founding Bayfield, Riyaz was the Chief Operating Officer of Canada’s largest proxy firm, for three years. He co-led the firm’s efforts to provide confidential strategic and governance advice to over a dozen large cap public companies, to protect against potential or threatened dissident actions. Riyaz also co-led the firm’s efforts on some of the most high profile proxy contests and hostile bids in Canadian history. Prior to that, Riyaz was employed by an international asset manager for almost 10 years in New York and Toronto. He worked in a variety of analytical, business development and operational roles at the firm, eventually heading up overall research and operational efforts. Teamed with the Chief Investment Officer, he helped originate, negotiate and structure billions of dollars of direct and secondary market equity investments into small, mid and large cap public companies. Riyaz is a director of TSX-listed Difference Capital Funding Inc., a director of the Canadian Journalism Foundation, and a past director of two junior mining companies. He is active in Canadian politics.