Michael Lee-Chin was born on 3 January 1951 and is a Jamaican-Canadian billionaire businessman, philanthropist and the chairman and CEO of Portland Holdings Inc, a privately held investment company in Ontario, Canada.
24 Facts About Michael Lee-Chin
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In 2016, Michael Lee-Chin was appointed chairman of the government of Jamaica's Economic Growth Council.
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Michael Lee-Chin was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, in 1951 to Aston Lee and Hyacinth Gloria Chen.
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When Michael Lee-Chin was aged seven, his mother married Vincent Chen who had a son from a previous relationship, and the couple had seven children together, six boys and one girl.
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Michael Lee-Chin's mother sold Avon products and worked as a bookkeeper for various local firms, while his stepfather ran a local grocery store.
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Michael Lee-Chin attended the local high school, Titchfield High, between 1962 and 1969.
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Michael Lee-Chin financed his first year at university on his own but after that was able to attend on scholarship.
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Michael 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.
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In 1987, Michael Lee-Chin took the proceeds from his Mackenzie investment to buy a Kitchener-based company called the Advantage Investment Council for $200,000.
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Michael Lee-Chin renamed the company AIC, and developed it to a fund that controlled around C$6 billion, with hundreds of thousands of investors.
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In 2009, Michael Lee-Chin sold AIC Limited to Manulife for an undisclosed amount.
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Michael Lee-Chin's response was to sell stock in Coca-Cola, and invest US$65 million into Mackenzie Holdings.
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On 5 October 2006, Michael Lee-Chin announced his resignation as CEO of AIC, to be replaced by Jonathan Wellum, AIC's chief investment officer.
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Vera Michael Lee-Chin had contested the terms of the separation agreement, claiming that Michael Lee-Chin did not disclose his actual wealth at the time of the separation.
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Michael Lee-Chin is well-known in Ontario, Canada as a prolific car collector, specifically of Ferraris.
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Michael Lee-Chin's collection includes a LaFerrari, Ferrari 599 GTO, Ferrari F12tdf, and Ferrari Enzo.
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In 2021, Michael Lee-Chin took delivery of a 115.10m Lurssen superyacht named Ahpo, worth an estimated US$354 million.
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In 2023, after just over one year of ownership, Michael Lee-Chin sold Ahpo to fellow Canadian billionaire Patrick Dovigi, who subsequently renamed the yacht to Lady Jorgia.
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Michael Lee-Chin provided a $10 million gift to the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
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Michael Lee-Chin saw potential in his native country, and Portland purchased 75 per cent of the National Commercial Bank of Jamaica for 6 billion Jamaican dollars from the Jamaican Government.
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Similar to the experience of the late 1990s, Michael Lee-Chin again has shied away from investing in commodities and the energy market boom.
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Michael Lee-Chin 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".
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Michael Lee-Chin describes the market since 1990 as "a series of rolling speculations", and now "we see a commodities bubble".
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Michael Lee-Chin invested in public investment management businesses which benefit from a rising market in two ways.