John Kenny and Mark Van Hees founded Solium in Calgary in 1999. Both were financial advisers, and Kenny had worked at Mackie Research Capital and Canaccord Genuity.
Solium built software for employee share plans. TransAlta, Encana and Shell were among its first clients. It listed on the TSX Venture Exchange in 2001 and became profitable in 2004.
The company then grew by acquisition. It bought Transcentive from Computershare in 2010, CapMx in 2012, Capshare in 2017 and Advanced-HR in 2018, and opened offices in London in 2011 and Sydney in 2014.
Morgan Stanley agreed to buy Solium in February 2019 at C$19.15 per share, about C$1.1 billion. The deal closed on May 1, 2019, and the business became Shareworks.