The chief financial officer of Claridge Homes, Neil Malhotra, has been selected as the CFO of the Year for 2025 by the Ottawa Business Journal and the Ottawa Board of Trade.
The CFO of the Year Award was established in 2018 to recognize the critical role that finance leaders play in successful organizations. The award criteria include: notable actions to maximize an organization’s financial strength and growth during the period; a demonstrated commitment to achieving best practices in accounting; success in overcoming significant financial challenges; and an overall contribution to the community.
OBJ sat down with Malhotra to discuss his CFO journey and how he’s contributing his expertise to community projects.
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The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Claridge Homes was founded by your father, Bill Malhotra, and has been central to your family for almost 40 years. How did that shape your formative years and the start of your career?
A: We grew up with it, it was always part of our lives. My father immigrated here in the mid-’70s, he’s a structural engineer. After working with a local structural engineering firm, he moved to reviewing plans at the City of Ottawa. As he tells it, he got tired of approving other people’s plans and decided to do his own projects. My brother and I were young at that time, 11 or 12. On Sunday mornings, I would go with my father to look at a building he was working on. As a teenager, I worked in the office and helped with sales in a couple of presentation centres. I spent one summer on a construction site. I was away at Western University for four years and I distinctly remember coming home after graduation thinking I would take the summer off. I think I was home for three days and there was an opening –– and I’ve been here ever since. It’s just sort of in our blood and we’re proud of it.
Q: What have been some defining moments for you in your role as CFO at Claridge?
A: I’ve been here full time for just over 25 years. I carry the CFO title, I deal with more of the financial side of the business. My brother carries the COO title, my father acts as the CEO. But we wear different hats and work in all aspects of the business; we’re kind of a three-headed monster for big decisions. Over the past decade, the biggest large-scope project was the development of purpose-built rental properties. We worked with the city and CMHC and banks to be able to make that happen. I’m proud we developed almost 3,000 units. But I’m proudest of the fact that we’ve had a very successful transition to introducing a second generation. There are folks in our situation –– in our industry and other businesses –– and it’s not always smooth. When you have a successful father, it’s easy to maybe not be the hardest-working person. I think my brother and I have done a pretty decent job of providing value and growing the business.Â
Q: What is the most important attribute to have as an effective CFO?
A: Ultimately, having perspective of the big picture is critical for all CFOs. It’s easy to get overly focused on straight numbers, but understanding where your operations is coming from and prevailing issues are very important. Having the long-term outlook allows us to always consider the big picture in our decision-making. We have a luxury: we’re a private company, we don’t have a partner. I think that’s a little more challenging in other spaces, whether you’re a public company that has to report every three months, or you have investors you’re constantly reporting to.Â
Q: How have you parlayed your skills and knowledge as a CFO into economic development issues such as the mayor’s housing task force and downtown revitalization?
A: In the case of the housing task force, Claridge probably builds the widest variety of housing in the city; we’ve built condos, we do multi-res, we have a seniors’ housing business, and we build houses in the suburbs. We were very involved in affordable housing in the early ‘90s. We tried to bring a perspective of things that are preventing us from building that stuff today, why it’s harder. I try to bring a broad perspective; I’m not bringing the Claridge perspective to everything I do. It’s what is best intended for the city, not what’s best intended for me. I try to bring honest opinions and reasonable data to back up suggestions.Â
Downtown is a different animal; it’s about creating a community that will keep attracting people. Beyond the residential units we’ve built into the downtown core, Claridge has done a lot of things that we don’t necessarily get credit for. We’ve introduced three new grocery stores downtown in the last 10 years, which was a huge void if you were north of the Queensway and west of the Rideau Centre. It makes the communities vibrant. Around the Farm Boy on Metcalfe Street, we put up 850 units in the immediate couple of blocks. Even on a quiet Saturday morning downtown, it’s a buzzing corner where that Farm Boy is; there’s always lots of people there, which is great. We’re local and we’re in this for the long term, so our approach has always been to make projects that people want to live in, but we want things around it at the same time. So I tried to bring some of that to the table –– our experiences, the positives we see –– and elevate those things in the city of Ottawa.
Q: Tell me about your role as co-chair for the CHEO Foundation’s capital campaign –– aiming to raise $220 million in support of CHEO’s campus redevelopment plan –– and your work with the Senators on LeBreton Flats.
A: My wife, Ainsley, has been involved with the CHEO Foundation for a long time, she’s the past chair. My job, along with the other co-chairs and cabinet members, is to really tell the story of CHEO and why this expansion is required. There hasn’t been a significant increase in the facility since it was built 50 years ago but the community has at least doubled, so we’ve got a heck of a lot more kids around. I think CHEO is probably the most important institution in the city, because if we can’t help children get to a spot in life where they can be functioning adults, everything else is kind of out the window. So it was easy to say yes to take it on and I’m looking forward to hopefully being successful in the project.Â
With the Ottawa Senators, it’s a joint effort with my brother. Technically, I’m chair of the real estate committee for the ownership. I’ve seen our role as helping Michael (Andlauer) understand real estate in the city, supporting Cyril (Leeder) in navigating to get a deal with the NCC and helping guide the process of planning and development of the arena. We’re trying to help them get the right people around the table, we’re passing on our general knowledge to hopefully make the project successful.
Q: What advice would you give to your younger self, or to an up-and-coming CFO?
A: The biggest lesson I’ve learned from my father is that if you believe in what you do, be all in and give it everything you have; don’t get distracted early with a little bit of success. My father grew up in middle-class India, which was not very wealthy. Now he’s 75 and his name is all over the newspapers for his wealth, but he lives every day like he might not have money tomorrow. It’s probably the best way you can live your life and applying that to business is critical. Don’t get distracted –– whether it’s fancy cars or whatever –– stay true to yourself and keep investing in yourself.
The CFO of the Year award is part of the Best Ottawa Business Awards – better known as the BOBs – which are presented annually each fall. Malhotra and other notable local business leaders – including the Newsmaker of the Year recipient and the CEO of the Year – will receive their awards in a gala at the Westin Ottawa on Friday, Nov. 28.
