Michael Lee-Chin, OJ, OOnt (born 3 January 1951) is a Jamaican-Canadian billionaire businessman, philanthropist and the chairman and CEO of Portland Holdings Inc, a privately held investment company in Ontario, Canada.
When Lee-Chin was aged seven, his mother married Vincent Chen[10] who had a son from a previous relationship, and the couple had seven children together, six boys and one girl.
[14] In 1970, he went to Canada on a scholarship program sponsored by the Jamaican government to study Civil Engineering at McMaster University,[15] and graduated in 1974.
[19] Lee-Chin spent two years at the Investors Group, in the Hamilton, Ontario office and in 1979, moved to Regal Capital Planners and became regional manager.
While at the company, in 1983, he secured a loan from the Continental Bank of Canada for C$800,000 to purchase a stake in Mackenzie Financial Group and formed Kicks Athletics with Andrew Gayle.
Following the acquisition of AIC Limited, Lee-Chin set up the Berkshire group of companies, comprising an investment planning arm, a securities dealership and an insurance operation.
The Globe and Mail ran an article predicting that even more investors would leave the fund, meaning that it would run out of cash and be forced to sell its core holdings.
"[26] As a result, in December 2004, AIC Limited was forced to return CAD $58.8 million to affected investors, which was the largest penalty imposed on any of the fund companies in the OSC investigation.
Markland Street Asset Management, which launched the Oil Sands Sector Fund, raised C$430 million in one of Canada's largest closed-end IPOs.
In 2023, after just over one year of ownership, Lee-Chin sold Ahpo to fellow Canadian billionaire Patrick Dovigi, who subsequently renamed the yacht to Lady Jorgia.
The gift established the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.
[38] Michael Lee-Chin and family received the 2015 Association of Fundraising Professionals' (Golden Horseshoe Chapter) National Philanthropy Award in the category of Outstanding Philanthropist.
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".
A controlling interest in CVM Communications Group (consisting of radio and television stations and newspapers) was purchased at the same time.
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".
[42] Again, this strategy has meant that AIC has significantly underperformed the S&P index, but Lee-Chin stated in 2006 that he believed that the current boom is just another bubble.