Michael Lee-Chin is a Jamaican-Canadian billionaire businessman, the chairman, philanthropist and CEO of Portland Holdings Inc, a privately held funding organisation in canada.
Lee-Chin became chairman of the government of Jamaica's Economic Growth Council in 2016.
Lee-Chin has made several huge pledges and donations in Canada to the Royal Ontario Museum in 2003, the Rotman School of Management, the Joseph Brant Hospital Foundation and McMaster University. Lee-Chin was chancellor of Wilfrid Laurier University.
Michael Lee-Chin was born in Port Antonio, in 1951. Both his mother and father were biracial African and Chinese-Jamaican. When Lee-Chin was elderly seven, his mom married Vincent Chen. Lee-Chen had a son from a preceding relationship and the couple had a further seven kids together, six boys and one girl. Lee-Chin's mom sold Avon products and worked as a bookkeeper for various nearby firms, while his stepfather ran a grocery store.
He attended the high school, Titchfield High, between 1962 and 1969.
In 1965, Lee-Chin's first job got here working as a part of the landscaping group at the Frenchman's Cove Hotel. The next 12 months, he were given a summer job working on the Jamaica Queen cruise ship, cleansing engines room.
He went to Canada on a scholarship software sponsored through the Jamaican government to study Civil Engineering at McMaster University in 1970 and graduated in 1974. He financed his first 12 months at university on his very own but after that was capable of attend on scholarship.
After graduating from McMaster, Lee-Chin worked in brief as a road engineer for the Jamaican authorities, however not able to discover work in his qualified field, he back to Canada where he started graduate studies in business. At first he worked as a bouncer, however later found employment as a financial guide for Inverstors Group.
Lee-Chin spent years on the Investors Group, withinside the Hamilton, Ontario workplace and in 1979, moved to Regal Capital Planners and have become regional manager. While on the organization, in 1983, he secured a loan from the Continental Bank of Canada for C$500,000 to buy a stake in Mackenzie Financial Group and formed Kicks Athletics with Andrew Gayle. By 1987, the investment was well worth $3.5 million.
In 1987, Lee-Chin took the harvest from his Mackenzie investment to shop for a Kitchener-based organisation referred to as the Advantage Investment Council for $200,000. At the time, the organisation had holdings of around C$800,000. He renamed the organisation AIC, and developed it to a fund that these days controls around C$6 Billion, with thousands of investors. Following the purchase of AIC Limited, Lee-Chin set up the Berkshire organization of companies – comprising an investment making plans arm, a securities dealership and an insurance operation. By 2007, Berkshire accumulated more than C$12 billion of assets under administration. In 2007, Manulife obtained Berkshire from Portland Holdings in exchange for shares, making Portland one of the biggest shareholders of Manulife.
Lee-Chin sold AIC Limited to Manulife in 2009. The following 12 months, Manulife rebranded the historical past AIC price range and removed the AIC call from the mutual fund line-up.
Mr. Lee-Chin is Director and Chairman of Mandeville Holdings Inc. and Executive Chairman, CEO, and Portfolio Manager of Portland Investment Counsel Inc.
