Michael Lee-Chin

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Michael Lee-Chin
Born	1951 Port Antonio, Jamaica
Occupation	Chairman of AIC Limited, National Commercial Bank of Jamaica
Net worth	▲US$1.8 billion (2008)[1]

Michael Lee-Chin (born 1951) is a Jamaican-Canadian investor. Amongst other positions, he is currently Chairman of AIC Limited (a Canadian mutual fund), and the National Commercial Bank of Jamaica. In the latest Forbes Billionaires List, he was placed at number 677, with assets worth around $1.8 billion.^[1] (Though Lee-Chin's wealth has been as high as $2.6 billion in the past.) Canadian Business has named him as one of the richest people in Canada.^[2]

Contents 1 Background 1.1 Background 1.2 Introduction 1.3 Career 1.4 Investments 1990 - 2005 1.5 Private Life 2 Current fund growth and difficulties 2.1 Investment in Caribbean 2.2 Commodities boom 3 Business strategy 4 Accolades and awards 5 Business ventures 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

[edit] Background

[edit] Background

Lee-Chin was born in Port Antonio, Portland, Jamaica in 1951. His mother, Gloria, was 18 years old, and his father, Aston Lee, had moved to England before Lee-Chin was born. Both his parents were biracial Chinese Jamaicans. His Grandfathers were Hakka Chinese who had emigrated to Jamaica, while his grandmothers were both African-Caribbean Jamaicans. When Lee-Chin was aged 7, his mother married Vincent Chen.^[3] Chen also had a son from a previous relationship, and the couple had a further 7 children together, including 6 boys and 1 girl.^[4] His mother sold Avon products, and worked as a book-keeper for various local firms, while his stepfather ran a local grocery store.^[5] He attended the local high school, Titchfield High, between 1962 and 1969.^[6]

His first job came in 1965 working as part of the landscaping team at the Frenchman's Cove Hotel.^[7] In 1966 he got a summer job working on the Jamaica Queen cruise ship, cleaning the engine room.

[edit] Introduction

In 1970 he went to Canada on a scholarship program sponsored by the Jamaican Government to study Civil Engineering at McMaster University,^[8] and graduated in 1974.^[9] During the 8th Annual Kumon Instructor Conference Meeting 2007^{[citation needed]} in Toronto, he says that he personally met the Jamaican Prime Minister, Hugh Lawson Shearer, to request a grant for his studies (though this is disputed by journalists). In the first year at the University, he was spending by his own money. After the first summer, he requested for the scholarship.^[10] Other reports say that this is merely apocryphal, as the alleged meeting had been 7 months before the cheque for C$15,000 arrived from the Jamaican education authority.

[edit] Career

He worked briefly as a road engineer for the Jamaican Government,^[11] but unable to find work in his qualified field (and allegedly, because his Canadian wife didn't like living in Jamaica), he returned to Canada. At first he worked as a bouncer, but later found employment as a financial advisor for Investors Group.^[12]

He spent two years at the Investors Group, in the Hamilton, Ontario office and in 1979, moved to Regal Capital Planners and became regional manager. Whilst at the company, in 1983, he secured a loan from the Continental Bank of Canada for C$500,000 to purchase a stake in Mackenzie Financial Group. By 1987, the investment was worth C$3.5 million.^[13]

In 1985, he set up the Berkshire Group, as a financial services company with subsidiaries in insurance, investment, and securities. In 1987, he bought a Kitchener-based company called the Advantage Investment Council for $200,000. At the time, the company had holdings of around C$800,000. He renamed the company AIC, and developed it to a fund that today controls around C$12 Billion, with around a million investors.

[edit] Investments 1990 - 2005

In the late 1980s, AIC suffered from a collapse in the real estate market, in which it had invested. It recovered throughout the early 1990s by maintaining investments in large groups, such as Merrill Lynch and TD bank (formerly Toronto Dominion). This caused investments to grow from US$8 million in 1990 to nearly US$8 billion by 1998.

However, Lee-Chin was reluctant to invest in the dotcom boom, and saw AIC investments lose 8 per cent in value, even as the S&P gained 56 per cent. Investors moved US$224 million out of AIC's flagship 'Advantage Mutual Fund'. The Globe and Mail ran an article predicting even more investors to leave the fund, meaning that they would run out of cash and be forced to sell its core holdings. Lee-Chin's response was to sell stock in Coca-Cola, and invest US$65 million into Mackenzie Holdings (the same firm in which he had invested US$400,000 16 years previously). Letters were sent to all 350,000 investors, explaining the strategy. The investors were calmed by the purchase, and the stock was later sold to Investor Group (the same company Lee-Chin had worked for in the 1980s) at more than twice the price AIC had paid for it.^[14] In 2000 and 2001, following the dotcom crash, AIC outperformed the market with 26 per cent growth and 4 per cent decline respectively.^[15]

In 2002, the fund fell again as a result of a regulatory investigation into Amvescap, one of their core holdings. The OSC fined AIC US$58.8 million for their involvement.^[16]

On October 5, 2006, he announced his resignation as CEO of AIC, to be replaced by Jonathan Wellum, AIC's chief investment officer.

[edit] Private Life

In 1974, he married Vera Lee-Chin, a Ukrainian Canadian that he had met at University. They parted in 1991, and officially separated (though did not divorce) in 1997. Ms. Lee-Chin has since contested the separation, claiming that Lee-Chin did not disclose his actual wealth at the time of the separation.^[17] The couple had three children (Michael Jr., Paul, and Adrian).

Lee-Chin is in a relationship with Sonya Hamilton, with whom he has fraternal-twin daughters. They live in Flamborough, a rural suburb of Hamilton, Ontario.

[edit] Current fund growth and difficulties

[edit] Investment in Caribbean

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Jamaica went through a period of financial crisis.^[18] Lee-Chin saw potential in his native country, and used AIC to purchase 75 per cent of the National Commercial Bank of Jamaica for 6 billion Jamaican dollars (US$127 million) from the Jamaican Government.

In 2004, he announced plans to set up the AIC Caribbean Fund with the intention of investing in the entire Caribbean region. The stated aim of the fund is to raise US$1 billion in order to "make investments in businesses located in countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), with an emphasis on Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago".^[19] So far, it has made a number of large-scale investments, including Radio Jamaica, Desnoes and Geddes, Cable and Wireless, and Life of Jamaica. In April 2006, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a US Government Agency, loaned AIC US$80 million.^[20] The announcement of the loan included a statement about the intention of the fund to invest US$250 million in the region. It is therefore not clear if Lee-Chin has scaled back his plans for the investment, or if he will set up other funds to meet the original figure.

[edit] Commodities boom

Similar to the experience of the late 1990s, Lee-Chin again has shied away from investing in commodities and the energy market boom. He has specifically stated that "We [AIC] do not like commodities-type businesses nor most high-tech companies simply because they are implicitly poor enterprises which we would not want to hold for the long term".^[21]

Again, this strategy has meant that AIC has significantly underperformed the S&P index, but Lee-Chin believes that the current boom is just another bubble. Lee-Chin describes the market since 1990 as "a series of rolling speculations", and now 'we see a commodities bubble'.^[22]

[edit] Business strategy

While at Investors Group, he studied the strategies of successful investors, such as Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham and Kenneth Thomson. Their buy and hold strategy is easily recognisable in the motto of AIC - Buy, hold and prosper.

[edit] Accolades and awards

Lee-Chin has received various business awards, including:

• Being placed on the Forbes Billionaires list since 2001. In 2006, he was placed at number 365.
• In 2002, Lee-Chin received the 'Harry Jerome Award' for 'Business Leader of the Decade'^[23]
• Time Magazine named Lee-Chin one of 'Canada's Heroes' in July 5, 2004.

He is also a generous philanthropist, and has donated to various causes, including:

• C$5 million to McMaster University (which he attended). He was rewarded with an Honorary Degree in November 2003.^[24]

• JMD$155 million (approx. USD $2.4 million) to Northern Caribbean University.^[25]

• C$30 million to the Royal Ontario Museum. In return, they commissioned a new building named the Michael Lee Chin Crystal.^[26] Designed by Daniel Libeskind, it opened on June 2, 2007.
• An unspecified amount of money that makes him one of the leading donors to Bill Clinton's William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation.^[27] He was appointed to the Board of Trustees for the fund in 2003.^[28]

On June 19, 2007, an honorary Doctorate of Laws degree was conferred upon Michael Lee-Chin by the University of Toronto.

[edit] Business ventures

• AIC Limited - http://www.aic.com/
• Berkshire Group - http://www.berkshire.ca/
• Columbus Communications -

• Cable Bahamas - http://www.cablebahamas.com/

• Caribbean Crossings - http://www.caribbeancrossings.com/

• Columbus Communications Jamaica Ltd. / Flow Jamaica - http://www.flowjamaica.com/

• FibraLink - http://www.fibralink.com/
• CVM Television Group - http://www.cvmtv.com/
• Merit Communications - http://www.meritcom.net/

• New World Network - http://www.nwncable.com/

• Americas Region Caribbean Optical-ring System (ARCOS)

• Sauce Cable Company

• Affordable Enterprise Ltd.
• Cabana Cable Ltd.
• Dynamic Corp, a company in the making Eastern Cable Network Ltd.
• Home Commercial Satellite Ltd.
• Universal Cable Network Ltd.

• Columbus Communications Trinidad Ltd/Flow Trinidad - http://www.flowtrinidad.com/
• Columbus Communications Grenada Ltd/Flow Grenada - http://www.grenadabroadcast.com/

• Eastern Caribbean Gas Pipeline Company (ECGPC)
• National Commercial Bank of Jamaica (NCB) - http://www.jncb.com/
• Radio Jamaica - http://www.radiojamaica.com/
• Reggae Beach (resort), Jamaica
• Senvia - http://www.senvia.com/
• Total Finance Bank of Trinidad & Tobago Ltd.
• Trident Hotel (Resort) - http://www.tridentjamaica.com/

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• List of billionaires

[edit] External links

• Lee Chin secures US$80m for Caribbean fund (May 7, 2006) - Jamaica Observer
• Lee Chin's media push
• Silver Rights
• Breaking news