MICHAEL LEE-CHIN

Lee-Chin grew up in Port Antonio, Jamaica. His first job, at 14, was landscaping at the Frenchman's Cove hotel.

He moved to Canada in 1970 to study civil engineering at McMaster University and graduated in 1974. He worked briefly as a road engineer in Jamaica, then as a nightclub bouncer, then as a financial advisor at Investors Group.

In 1983 he borrowed C$500,000 to buy Mackenzie Financial shares, which were worth C$3.5 million by 1987. That year he bought Advantage Investment Counsel for $200,000 and renamed it AIC Limited.

AIC peaked at about $15 billion in assets. He stepped down as CEO in 2006 and sold the retail fund business to Manulife in 2009.

Through Portland Holdings he took control of National Commercial Bank Jamaica in 2002 and still chairs it. In 2016 Jamaica made him chairman of its Economic Growth Council.

He gave $5 million to McMaster in 2001 to set up the Michael Lee-Chin & Family Institute.

Portland Holdings Inc. (private holding company, chairman and CEO).

National Commercial Bank Jamaica (controlling shareholder, chairman of NCB Financial Group since 2002). AIC Limited (bought 1987, retail fund business sold to Manulife 2009).

Columbus Communications (previously held through Portland).

Lee-Chin is a textbook concentrated long-term investor with a Caribbean edge. His rules come down to this: own a few great businesses, understand them, finance them with other people's money, and hold on.

He is not a diversifier. His Caribbean focus, above all Jamaican banking through NCB, was deeply contrarian when he made it.

Almost no Canadian institutional money was going to Caribbean markets. He saw strong businesses priced cheaply and a growing regional middle class.

Mackenzie Financial. In 1983 he borrowed C$500,000 from Continental Bank and put it into shares of the fund company Mackenzie.

Four years later the stake was worth C$3.5 million. He used that windfall to buy a tiny fund manager called Advantage Investment Counsel for $200,000 in 1987, renamed it AIC, and grew it to about $15 billion in assets at its peak.

One borrowed bet paid for everything that came after.

Two, and they are related. First, AIC let certain outside investors market-time its funds between 1999 and 2003, trading in and out to skim profits from long-term holders.

The Ontario Securities Commission found out, and in December 2004 AIC paid back C$58.8 million, the biggest penalty in that investigation. Second, the concentrated bet on financial stocks that built AIC also sank it.

Assets fell from about $15 billion to roughly $3.8 billion by the time Manulife bought the retail fund business in 2009 for an undisclosed price.

His philosophy is simple: identify a great business, use other people's money sensibly to acquire it, and hold it for a long time. He argues true wealth comes from owning businesses, not trading them.

He is openly critical of fund managers who spread money across hundreds of stocks, because that just gets you the index. He has said most people fail to build wealth because they move too fast, diversify too much, and do not believe enough in their own convictions.

Born January 3, 1951, in Port Antonio, Jamaica, to Hyacinth Gloria Chen and Aston Lee. He married Vera Lee-Chin in 1974 and they divorced in 1997.

They have three sons, Michael Jr., Paul and Adrian. He later married Sonya Lee-Chin and has twin daughters, Elizabeth and Maria.

That is five children in total. He lives in Burlington, Ontario, and keeps going back to Jamaica as an investor.

McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. Bachelor of Engineering in Civil Engineering, 1974.

He went on a scholarship after his first year. Everything he knows about investing he taught himself on the job, starting as a financial advisor at Investors Group.

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