The president and CEO of Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. said a proposed management buyout at the financial services firm did not proceed due to the regulatory approvals it would not receive.

Dan Daviau said the proposed $1.1-billion deal was abandoned last week after the June 13 deadline was not extended.

“We are a heavily regulated business,” he told BNN Bloomberg Monday. “We’ve got 13 different regulators that look at us. We had an issue in one of our foreign subsidiaries -- not an existential issue, but an issue nonetheless -- that would have prevented us from getting an approval from a change of control.”

Daviau declined to elaborate further, citing legal advice.

“It’s not tangible enough yet to be able to speak to it intelligently,” he said. “We communicated it to the market, not because it was so material, but it was affecting our bid.”

Last week, the firm reported losses of $7.2 million for its fourth quarter, as revenue reached $430.4 million.

Daviau said the losses are actually better than many of the other investment firms.

“We’ve tend to do better that the rest of the market, in other words, our declines were less than the rest of the market, but it’s going to impact results no matter how you measure it, so we’re suffering that together with the rest of the investment community,” he said.