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By Annan Boodram |
Fund manager AIC Ltd. plans to go head-to-head with the Bank of Nova Scotia's subsidiary in Jamaica once its $214-million deal to buy a majority stake in Jamaica-based National Commercial Bank is completed, AIC's chief executive officer Michael Lee-Chin said.
"We have great ambitions for the [National Commercial] bank," Mr. Lee-Chin of privately held Burlington, Ont.-based AIC said in an interview with the Globe & Mail.
Mr. Lee-Chin said AIC bought the Jamaican government's 76-per-cent block in National Commercial Bank, which is competing against Bank of Nova Scotia Jamaica Ltd. to become the undisputed market leader in Jamaica.
He said that National Commercial Bank, which has about $2.85-billion in banking assets, lost its leadership position last year to the Scotiabank subsidiary, which has just over $3-billion in banking assets. (National Commercial bank has $3.7-billion in total assets, including its trust and insurance subsidiaries.)
"Bank of Nova Scotia Jamaica Ltd. has historically also been their [Scotiabank's] most profitable subsidiary," said the Jamaican-born Mr. Lee-Chin.
Under the proposed bank deal, AIC will make a payment of $91-million when the transaction closes on March 18. The balance will be paid over nine years.
From a family of nine, Mr. Lee-Chin, 50, left Jamaica in 1969 to study civil engineering at McMaster University in Hamilton. After selling mutual funds for a number of years, he struck out on his own in 1987 and acquired AIC, a small investment firm with less than $1-million in assets.
In the past fifteen years the acolyte of investment guru Warren Buffet has single-handedly built AIC into Canada's largest privately owned fund company and 10th biggest overall (more than $14-billion in assets under management), and amassed a considerable personal fortune in the process. Canada's Financial Post estimated Mr. Lee-Chin's personal wealth at $1.57-billion in its Wealth Report last May, placing him 19th on the list of Canada's richest people.
The chairman and chief investment officer of AIC, whose 100,000 square-foot headquarters include a launch pad for his helicopter, made headlines last spring when he paid a reported US$12.45-million for a waterfront mansion in a tony district of Miami.
Last year, the mutual fund entrepreneur teamed up with the Caisse de dépot et placement du Québec in a bid to seize control of Mackenzie Financial Corp., but was trumped by a $4.15-billion friendly offer from Investors Group.
An AIC spokesman said that Mr. Lee-Chin is mulling a plan to place bank branches in SuperPlus Food Stores, a Jamaican supermarket chain operated by his brother Chen.
"He mentioned to me that there was a huge potential at that bank, and that they had to have better customer service," said the spokesman.
Chin has stated that his management strategy in Jamaica would mimic his personal business ethos that had made him such a success in Canada. He would strive, he argued, to improve on the current structure at NCB, and to engender an esprit de corps among the management and staff.
"We will work as diligently as possible to make sure the staff is secure, and confident about the future and provide a fertile environment for their development," he declared. "We will work with passion. We want 80 per cent of the market. We will build a first-class institution that will add maximum value for the shareholders."