The Team

Donald B. Hilton is the Founder and Managing Partner at Distinct Capital Partners. Donald has over 35 years of investment banking experience. He has worked with several leading Canadian investment dealers and he also has distinguished experience in merchant banking, having managed a multi-billion dollar portfolio of investments in the USA. Donald has extensive international experience, having advised on cross-border deals while working in Europe and North America; with a deep local understanding of Switzerland, France, the USA and Canada.

Prior to founding Distinct Capital Partners, Donald served as President of Cassis Capital Corp., a mid-market investment bank he founded in 1994. Prior to that, he served as Vice President of Merchant Banking at Trilon Financial (now Brookfield Asset Management). Donald has also completed interim management assignments in conjunction with raising capital for TSX listed clients; such as holding the positions of Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer for a specialty insurance company and President & CEO of an industrial minerals client.

Donald is a graduate of The University of British Columbia where he received the degrees of Bachelor of Commerce in Finance and Masters of Science (Finance) in Business Administration.

Ashit A. Savani is a Managing Director at Distinct Capital Partners. Ashit is a senior executive with over 25 years of experience in leading end-to-end mergers & acquisition (M&A) transactions, strategy formulation, and implementation and managing the finance & accounting functions. He has worked both in Canada & the USA in various industries, with a greater focus in the areas of Telecom, Media, Technology, Manufacturing, Business Services, and Real Estate.

Ashit began his career in the USA with Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC) in their Real Estate Advisory Group and then moved to AlliedSignal (now Honeywell) as an Internal Auditor where he gained valuable experience in the manufacturing sector. He then moved to Canada and worked with Allstream for over 15 years. At Allstream, he held progressively senior roles in their Strategy & Corporate Development group and their Finance group and collaboratively led numerous shareholder value-enhancing initiatives including all the M&A activity at the company. After Allstream, he worked with Woodbridge International, a mid-market M&A advisory firm.

During the course of his career, he has been a trusted advisor to the executive/ownership team. He has been recognized for building relationships, influencing decision making, and utilizing proven negotiation tactics. Ashit has mentored high-performing teams, managed cross-functional projects, and motivated colleagues to work collaboratively. Ashit is decisive and service focused and his keen understanding of capital markets makes him an invaluable team player.

Ashit has earned his Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting & Management (BCom), Master of Business Administration in Finance & Accounting (MBA), Master of Science in Finance (MSc), and a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

Paul Dalla Torre is a Managing Director at Distinct Capital Partners. Paul is a senior finance executive who has worked mainly with freight and logistics businesses in driving execution through strategy and building scale.

Paul gained invaluable practical experience with ex-global freight forwarder, Panalpina in Canada and South Africa as country CFO for 12 years.

Paul’s efforts were key in turning around a loss-making logistics business. He also led the identification of several business re-organizations including mergers and acquisitions (M&A), divestitures and succession planning within the freight industry.

Paul helped build scale and best practice within low margin, high transaction volume freight environments through implementing integrated business planning processes, staff up-skilling and productivity reviews, ERP & business intelligence systems and finance function re-organizations.  In addition, he facilitated the mission, vision, strategy and 5-year goal formulation for a high-growth wireless connectivity business in Canada and co-founded a greenfield family start-up in South Africa.

Paul earned his Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting (BCom) and Honours in Accounting (BAcc) from The University of the Witwatersrand and holds CA(SA) and CPA designations in South Africa and Canada, respectively.

Gerard A. De Souza is a Managing Director at Distinct Capital Partners. Gerard has over 25 years of experience in leadership roles at firms in a number of industries including mining, chemicals, manufacturing, telecom and financial software. Gerard has extensive experience in strategic planning, financial analysis, customer and product profitability, mergers and acquisitions, capital management and information technology.

Gerard began his career in Toronto, at Coopers and Lybrand (now PwC) in their Business Investigations Group. He then moved to Falconbridge Mines (now part of Xstrata) where he held roles in internal audit and financial reporting. He then moved to Rhone Poulenc, a Chemical/Pharmaceutical manufacturer where he gained valuable experience in manufacturing and distribution as the Divisional Controller. He also spent 15 years in the telecom sector in progressively more senior finance positions at Nortel Networks, Rogers Communications and MTS Allstream. Most recently, Gerard was Director of Commercial Finance for Finastra, a global financial software firm, where he helped in the integration of a number of acquisitions and led initiatives that significantly improved profitability.

During the course of his career, he has been recognized as a trusted and collaborative business partner with a record of building high-performance teams that have aligned with the firm’s goals and strategies to improve results.

Gerard earned his Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) from the University of Toronto and is a CPA, CA.

Ted C. Pollock is a Managing Director at Distinct Capital Partners. Ted has over 30 years of experience in corporate advisory, business valuation and accounting. He began with Clarkson Gordon (now Ernst and Young) where he obtained his CA and then moved to Thorne Ernst and Whinney (now KPMG) as a manager to work in corporate advisory where he gained valuable experience in mergers and acquisition across multiple sectors.

In 1991, Ted opened his own public accounting practice which he eventually sold to BDO Dunwoody in 2001.  He stepped into the industry side to become VP of Finance for a small cap TSX listed food distribution and manufacturing company; he was hired to successfully convert the company to an income trust.  He remained with the company for two more years to oversee all of their external reporting and conversion to compliance for corporate governance.  After a two-year stint in private enterprise corporate advisory for a large multi-national firm he joined a team to acquire and then oversee the successful transition of ownership as CFO of a US-based private company epoxy manufacturer.

Ted earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Ontario, his Chartered Accountant designation in 1987 and his Certified Financial Planner designation in 1997.