Stephen A. Jarislowsky

82
Stephen A. Jarislowsky bigraphy, stories - Canadian businessman

Stephen A. Jarislowsky : biography

1925 –

Stephen A. Jarislowsky, (born September 1925) is a Canadian financier, businessman and philanthropist. He is widely regarded as being the "Warren Buffett of Canada".Jane Lewis, , MoneyWeek, November 18, 2005 He is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Jarislowsky Fraser Limited, which he built into one of the largest and most successful investment management firms in Canada, with over C$40 billion in assets under management.

His personal wealth was estimated at $1.3 billion in March 2011, making him the 22nd richest person in Canada.

Biography

Jarislowsky was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Kaethe (née Gassmann) and Alfred Jarislowsky. He is the stepson of a steel mill owner in Germany, who was ousted by the Nazis for harbouring Jews. Jarislowsky emigrated to the United States in 1941 after boarding schools in the Netherlands and France. He came of age and was deeply affected by the Great Depression. In Asheville, North Carolina, he attended preparatory school, and then studied mechanical engineering for two years at Cornell University. With the US entry into World War II, he served in the US Army. He finished basic training and studied Japanese at the University of Chicago before serving in counter-intelligence in Japan after the war.

He returned to the University of Chicago in 1946 and graduated with an MA in Asian Studies and Phi Beta Kappa Honours. This was followed by a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1949. For the next three years, he worked as an engineer for Alcan Aluminum in Montreal. He briefly returned to the United States, but by June 1955 he returned to Montreal where he started Jarislowsky, Fraser & Company Limited.

In 2007, Jarislowsky’s firm, which owns 18 percent of the shares of Canfor, was embroiled in a bitter proxy fight with tycoon Jim Pattison, who owns 25 percent. Pattison won and ousted CEO Jim Shepherd over Canfor’s poor performance and declining share price, replacing him for the interim with Jim Shepard.Nathan VanderKlippe, , Financial Post Business, September 4, 2007

In several magazine and newspaper articles between 2002 and 2004, Jarislowsky correctly predicted the deep economic recession which began in 2008 in the United States and spread around the world. On December 16, 2008, in an interview on CBC’s The Current, he opined that the current recession would last at least two to five years and may last much longer if corrective measures are not taken by governments and the general public. He further argued that inflation is the only solution in the circumstances to reducing the enormous debt loads held at all levels of society and that massive and immediate government spending is also needed to stimulate the economy.

Personal life

He is married and has four children. Jarislowsky is a Companion of the Order of Canada and a Grand Officer (promoted from Knight) of the National Order of Quebec. He has Honorary Doctorates of Law from Canadian universities including McGill University, Queen’s University, University of Alberta, McMaster University, Université Laval, Concordia University, the University of Windsor, the Université de Montréal and the University of Ottawa.

Publications

  • The Investment Zoo (co-written with Craig Toomey), ISBN 2-89472-259-1.

Criticism and advocacy

Business ethics

Apart from his personal business pursuits, he is an outspoken defender of business ethics (and a critic of ethical breaches). In 2002 he co-founded (with Claude Lamoureux) the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance to further this cause, focusing on such contemporaries as Frank Stronach and Conrad Black for their corporate excesses.

Quebec separatism

Although not involved in politics, Jarislowsky is openly against Quebec nationalism. In 1997, in a speech to the Westmount Municipal Association, Jarislowsky drew comparisons between Parizeau and Bouchard with the fascism of Franco’s Spain and Hitler’s Nazi Germany and told how, days after the 1995 referendum, he suggested the partition of Quebec and the transformation of Montreal into a City state. In his speech, he stated that his fellow citizens should oppose the PQ which he said, "feed on the same kind of quasi religious fervor on which all fascists feed (be it the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany of fascist Italy, etc.) A Parizeau, a Bouchard should never be underestimated and, despite lullabies, should never put one to sleep."Stephen Jarislowsky, , May 1997