About Us
Our Story
In Arabic, our father's family name is Hajjarah (حجارة) — stone. Our mother's is Fanous (فانوس) — lantern. Translated into English, they became the name of this company. It is not a metaphor we chose. It is our two families.
Stone and Lantern was founded by five of us: Khalil, our father Ebraheim, our mother Sireen, Khalil's wife Jude, and his sister Amanda. We built it to do one thing well — buy good Canadian businesses and hold them for the long term, alongside real estate. Today that is one residential property; the businesses are where our focus and most of our capital will go.
We are deliberate about how we are structured. We invest our own capital rather than money raised from outside investors, which means no fund life, no return deadline, and no one able to force us to sell a business we have bought. When we tell an owner we intend to keep their company, that is a structural fact, not a promise.
Canada is in the middle of the largest transfer of business ownership in its history. Three-quarters of small business owners expect to exit within the decade, and fewer than one in ten has a plan for it. Most say that finding the right buyer matters as much as the price. That is the gap we exist to fill.
Our vision
To be the buyer Canadian business owners hope to find: a permanent, family-backed home for the companies they spent a lifetime building.
Our mission
To acquire and steward well-run Canadian small and medium-sized businesses, and to build a durable base of residential and commercial property — preserving what owners have built, supporting the people who work there, and compounding family capital responsibly across generations.
Our values
CANDOUR
We are straightforward in what we say, during a transaction and long after it. We explain our thinking and our number, we do not change terms once we have given our word, and we would rather have an uncomfortable conversation early than spring an unpleasant surprise later.
STEWARDSHIP
We are caretakers of something someone else built. Our job is to protect it, improve it carefully, and hand it on in better condition than we found it.
FIRST-PRINCIPLES THINKING
We judge every business on its own economics rather than on sector labels or what other buyers are doing. It is why we are sector-agnostic, and why we will back good companies others overlook.
PERMANENCE
We buy to hold. No fund life, no exit clock, no obligation to sell to anyone.
Khalil Hajjarah, CPA, MBA
CEO, Co-Founder
Khalil is a Principal in Oliver Wyman's Private Capital practice, where he leads commercial due diligence for private equity investors evaluating acquisitions. He began his career in audit at Deloitte and holds an MBA from the Smith School of Business at Queen's University.
Ebraheim Hajjarah
Senior Director, Co-Founder
Ebraheim is a Senior Director at PKF Al Bassam & Co. with approximately 25 years of experience in Big Four audit firms across Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, acting as audit and advisory leader to medium and large companies and family groups.