Stephen Jarislowsky

Stephen A. Jarislowsky (born September 1925) is a Canadian billionaire investor and philanthropist.

Born Berlin, Germany, the step-son of a steel mill owner in Germany who was ousted by the Nazis for harbouring Jews, Jarislowsky emigrated to the United States in 1941 after attending public and high school in the Netherlands and France. In Asheville, North Carolina, he attended preparatory school, and then studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University. With the US entry into World War II, he served in the US Army. He finished basic training and studied Japanese at the University of Chicago before serving in counter-intelligence in Japan after the war.

He returned to the University of Chicago in 1946 and graduated with an MA in Asian Studies and Phi Beta Kappa Honours. This was followed by a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1949. For the next three years, he worked as an engineer for Alcan Aluminum in Montreal. He briefly returned to the United States, but by June 1955 he returned to Montreal where he started Jarislowsky, Fraser & Company Limited.

Called by publisher Jean Paré the Warren Buffett of Canada[1] , he is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and former President of Jarislowsky, Fraser, which he built into one of the largest and most successful investment management firms in Canada, by 2005 managing assets of over C$54 billion [2]. His personal wealth has been estimated at $1.2 billion, making him the 25th richest person in Canada.[3]

He is a Director of the influential C.D. Howe Institute and has also been active in numerous other corporations besides his own including SNC-Lavalin, Canfor, Southam, Swiss Bank Corp., Velan Valve Inc., Abitibi and Goodfellow Lumber Inc. He has participated in educational, cultural and charitable activities, and with his wife Gail, to date has endowed eleven eponymous university chairs in Canada including those in Environment and Health (McMaster, established 2003); Families and Work (Guelph University, 2003); Religion and Conflict (Assumption University, Windsor); Public Sector Management (University of Ottawa, 2003); International Business Administration (Laval, 2000); Urology (McGill); Finance (University of Alberta, School of Business); Biotechnology (Saskatchewan, 2004); Technology and International Competition (École Polytechnique de Montréal); History (Concordia); and Public Sector Management (Ottawa, 2005). “All these chairs are concerned with excellence,” he is quoted as saying, "something Canadians have never really espoused". [4]

Cultural contributions include The Stephen A Jarislowsky Dance Studio in Vancouver, and the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, established in 2001 at Concordia University in Montreal.

In 2002 he co-founded (with Claude Lamoureux) the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance to further this cause, focusing on such contemporaries as Frank Stronach and Conrad Black for their corporate excesses.

Recently, Jarislowsky's firm which owns 18% of the shares of Canfor, was embroiled in a bitter proxy fight with tycoon Jim Pattison, who owns 25%. Pattison won and ousted CEO Jim Shepherd over Canfor's poor performance and declining share price, replacing him for the interim with Jim Shepard.[5]

Jarislowsky is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Grand Officer (promoted from Knight) of the National Order of Quebec. He has Honorary Doctorates of Law from a growing list of Canadian universities including Queen's University, University of Alberta, McMaster University, Université Laval, Concordia University, the University of Windsor,the Université de Montréal[6]and the University of Ottawa.

He is married and has four children.