Prominent business people, executives and former executives in North America
Introduction
Executives in the News (EITN) is a site that provides information about current and former business personalities as well as up-and-coming business people who appear in media, both tradtional and social media.
Just read in the Globe and Mail that Nadir Mohamed was chosen as the next CEO of Rogers. In the running were just him and the late Ted Rogers' son, Edward Rogers, currently head of the Cable business. It's said that Mr. Rogers will take a vice-chairman role at the top, to balance the overwhelming power that Mr. Mohamed will wield, and will advise more on strategy and acquisitions, versus the day to day operational leadership.
Not sure this is the best plan, as I'm a big fan of the 'if it ain't broke...' theory. Nadir Mohamed's experience in the industry, and his love-affair with Bay street is all about stability and long term vision. If a Rogers is calling those shots and once again micro-managing Mohamed, the market may not see the kind of results they're expecting.
I surmise that all will be addressed within the week when Rogers makes the announcement and spells out to analysts what the various roles and responsibilities will be. They cannot afford speculation, so I anticipate a very detailed description and lots of hand holding for Bay Street.
The question of who should replace the late Ted Rogers as CEO of Rogers Communications Inc. has long been a thorny subject at Rogers headquarters in Toronto. The natural choice currently in the recently created office of the president, is Nadir Mohamed. Mohamed came to Rogers after working for BCTel and Telus, and was instrumental in the acquisition of Microcell in 2004, which made RCI the largest provider of mobile services in Canada.
Alek Krstajic, head of prospective wireless operator BMV Holdings, warns it would be a mistake to count out Rogers' son, Edward Rogers, who heads the cable unit. While he has high praise for Mohamed – "Nadir is the single best executive in telecom in this country" – he said he now believes that a key element to the cable company's success lies in the fact that all can be traced back to a single person.
"There was a family feel to Rogers and a strength to the brand that comes from understanding that there is a person behind it," said Krstajic. "So, if there were problems, there was a person's name on it and that person would solve the problem."
Ultimately though, Edward Rogers lacks the experience and clout of Nadir Mohamed, and would likely support a move of Mohamed into the corner office. Read Full Post...
As Senior Vice President of Marketing, Rizwan Jamal brings 11 years of telecommunications and marketing experience to his role as he leads a national team dedicated to providing best-in-class marketing programs, including marketing communications, marketing intelligence, marketing operations, product marketing and related functions. He joined Clearnet Communications in 1998, prior to the TELUS acquisition, and has held increasingly senior roles within the organization. Prior to being appointed Senior Vice President, Rizwan held the position of Vice President of Channel Operations where he oversaw the company’s expanding national network of consumer product and service distribution channels, including corporate stores, dealer and retail partners, as well as direct sales. Rizwan holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo.
“TELUS and its team members are committed to give where we live,” said Rizwan Jamal, senior vice-president of Consumer Solutions at TELUS. “As such, we are proud to present an event like the RBC desiFEST which plays an important role in promoting and keeping alive the South Asian cultural richness across the country.”
Read Full Post...
Mr. Lind serves as Vice-Chairman of the Corporation. Mr. Lind joined the Corporation in 1969 as Programming Chief and has served as Secretary of the Board and Senior Vice President, Programming and Planning. Mr. Lind is also a director of the Council for Business and the Arts, the Power Plant (Contemporary Art Gallery at Harbourfront), and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Mr. Lind is a former member of the Board of the National Cable Television Association in the U.S. and is a former Chairman of the Canadian Cable Television Association. He is also Chairman of the Board of the CCPTA (Channel 17, WNED). Mr. Lind holds a B.A. (Political Science and Sociology), University of British Columbia and a M.A. (Political Science), University of Rochester. In 2002, he received a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, from the University of British Columbia. In 2002, Mr. Lind was appointed to the Order of Canada.Read Full Post...
former President and Chief Executive Officer, BCE and Chief Executive Officer, Bell Canada
Michael J. Sabia was President and Chief Executive Officer of BCE Inc. and Chief Executive Officer of Bell Canada. He is also Chairman of the Board of Bell Aliant Regional Communications, as well as director of BCE Inc., Bell Canada and The Thomson Corporation.
Mr. Sabia was President and Chief Operating Officer of BCE from March 2002 to April 2002, and Chief Operating Officer of Bell Canada from March 2002 to May 2002. He was President of BCE from 2000 to March 2002 and Executive Vice-President of BCE from July 2000 to December 2000, and Vice-Chair of Bell Canada from 2000 to March 2002. He was previously Vice-Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Bell Canada International Inc. (BCI) from 1999 to June 2000 and then Vice-Chair of BCI from 2000 to November 2001. Before joining BCI, Mr. Sabia was an executive of Canadian National Railway Company (railway company) where he joined as Vice-President, Corporate Development in 1993, and was appointed Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer in 1995. Prior to 1993, Mr. Sabia held a number of senior positions in the Canadian Federal Public Service, including Director-General of Tax Policy in the Department of Finance and Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet (Plans) in the Privy Council Office.
Sabia, the son of the feminist Laura Sabia, held a number of senior positions in Canada's federal public service during the 1980s and early 1990s, including:
* Director-General of Tax Policy in the Department of Finance * Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet (Plans) of the Privy Council Office.
Sabia's supervisor, Clerk of the Privy Council Paul Tellier, left the public service to assume the presidency of Crown corporation CN Rail in the early 1990s and subsequently persuaded Sabia to follow him to help in privatizing the company. Sabia's partnership with Tellier led to increasing respect within the Canadian business community for the rapid turn-around of the company's financial performance. Sabia held a number of executive positions at Canadian National Railway during the 1990s such as Vice-President, Corporate Development and Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer.
Sabia subsequently left CN to the executive offices at BCE.
On April 28, 2006, BCE announced that CEO Michael Sabia was taking a 555% pay increase, his salary being raised from $1.21 million CAD a year to $6.71 million CAD a year. The pay included a $1.25 million CAD salary, a $29.2 million CAD bonus that Sabia converted to deferred share units, a long-term incentive payout of $3 million CAD and other compensation, the filing shows. Bell Canada also posted record revenue increases for the previous fiscal year.
On September 21, 2007, Sabia announced he will leave BCE after the privatization deal closes.
Profile from Macleans magazine:
In her day, the late Laura Sabia was never shy about poking establishment noses. Tart and outspoken, the founding president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women in 1972 was a champion upender of the status quo. Now her youngest child, Michael, has suddenly vaulted into the top job at BCE INC., the bluest of the blue chips - it's telephone giant Bell Canada's parent after all - albeit in one of its periodic slides from glory. Thank goodness, shareholders may say, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
When 48-year-old Michael Sabia takes the dais this week at BCE's annual meeting, he will be wearing his darkest suit, speaking in his most careful tones and doing his best to keep his electric hair under control. Don't be fooled; he is truly the iconoclast's son. In two previous incarnations, Sabia took his lack of specific training, his distanced eye, and turned it into an asset. "If you want to know about water," he once said, "don't ask a fish." Ask instead, the one getting thrown in the deep end.
His first dunking was the GST. Somebody had to think that sucker through and figure out how to implement a new federal consumption tax across an unwieldy and unwilling economy during the all-consuming '80s. Might as well be the new kid in the Finance Department, you know, the one with the political science degree from Yale who had wanted to be an academic.
Then came a six-year stint as Paul Tellier's sidekick at Canadian National Railway Co. Just a couple of old civil service buddies fixing up a clunker. Actually, two pretty intense, ferociously driven ex-bureaucrats, who made a pig fly, as one business book had it: first by privatizing the former Crown corporation and then by turning it into one of the most efficient railways in North America. "This was a business miracle that business people were not able to produce," observes Stanley Hartt, chairman of Salomon Smith Barney Canada Inc., a commercial banker, and a deputy minister of finance during the Brian Mulroney years. And in the course of producing it, Sabia became, in Hartt's view, "the quintessential CFO," a chief financial officer who was routinely sought after by other corporations for his strategic thinking. "And he doesn't even have an accounting degree!" says Hartt. "He's not trapped by 'thinking inside the box' because he hasn't been in any single place long enough to be in a box."
But he is now. If not all that much is known about Michael Sabia - he's turned aside all interviews at least until he has met with shareholders and has all his management ducks lined up - there is no shortage of speculation about what ails giant BCE. Sabia has been at the telecom and communications conglomerate since October, 1999, coincidently just a few months after mentor Tellier joined the BCE board. Sabia started by running Bell Canada's international arm, its investments in phone and Internet companies in Asia and Latin America. But he was quickly moved up the ladder. By July, 2000, he became executive vice-president of parent BCE, and in January was named its chief operating officer, the No. 2 (again) but clearly the heir apparent to the patrician Jean Monty. No one, however, thought the coronation would come as quickly as it did, at the end of April, when Monty unexpectedly lost a protracted battle with the BCE board, fell on his sword, and left it to Sabia to pick up the corporate pieces. Pretty big pieces at that.
Bell's telephone operations were all doing well, aggressively grasping for market supremacy, in fact. But almost all its other big investments were coming apart at the seams. And BCE shares, the once-happy haven of widows and mutual funds, had lost about a third of their value. The biggest headache was Teleglobe Inc., a state-of-the-art subsidiary that was girdling the world with fibre optic cables in anticipation of an e-commerce data boom that never quite materialized. By walking away from Teleglobe in April, after what some estimate as a $15-billion investment, and pushing it into court-ordered bankruptcy protection, BCE has staunched its red ink. But it has also lost its own set of overseas conduits and, more importantly perhaps, the parent company's withdrawal has really ticked off a long list of creditors. Which leads to headache No. 2.
At the end of June, a six-month window opens for SBC Communications Inc. of San Antonio, Tex., one of the more successful of the so-called Baby Bells in the U.S., to require BCE to buy back SBC's 20 per cent stake in Bell Canada for fair market value plus a premium of 25 per cent. Or roughly $7.5 billion. Given SBC's own ambitions - it has reportedly been sniffing around the fire sale possibilities of its former parent, AT & T&T;, as well as Teleglobe - most analysts expect BCE to have to come up with the money somehow. Doing so might also bring it face to face with the underpinnings of the Monty-induced, Sabia-backed strategy, the so-called three Cs: content, connectivity and (e-)commerce. This was the notion that prompted BCE to go out and buy itself a television network, CTV, and a newspaper, the Globe and Mail, to pump through its new-found Internet and Teleglobe connections.
"This won't be his first priority," suggests Lawrence Surtees, senior telecom analyst with IDC Canada and a long-time Bell watcher. "But within six months to a year I can see Sabia dismembering his media properties. They make money. But for BCE that's mostly chump change. And if you want to be a real convergence carrier, you don't want to be just locked in to your own guys, you want to be able to do deals with their competitors."
The end of convergence? Much too soon to say. Sabia's first moves have been very cautious, moving his own executives up into place but no radical house-cleaning. The look is much more one of BCE's time-honoured corrections. For a blue-chip operator, it has a history of buying the wrong assets at the wrong time. During the booming 1980s it saddled itself with real estate and energy appendages. Then, after selling Nortel Networks Corp., its manufacturing arm, two years ago it went on its Internet and media buying spree. But in many respects, Surtees argues, Bell has been retrenching for much of the last decade, solidifying its hold on business and household telephone use in Central Canada, the Maritimes and parts of the West. "There has always been that question," he says. "What does BCE want to be when it grows up?"
You might say the same for Michael Sabia. He's probably taken his talented amateur act as far as he can go. He's not the No. 2 any more, as he was at CN or even with the GST, where his immediate boss was tough-talking David Dodge, now the governor of the Bank of Canada. Sabia's now the one in charge, not the "shit disturber" he once called himself who can afford to challenge everything that's on the table. By most accounts, an impressive, quippy, likeable guy - "as long as you have the smarts to stand up to him," a former colleague says - even former opponents have nothing but praise. "He's brilliant, bulldoggy but always courteous," says ex-Liberal minister Doug Young, who was his party's GST critic in opposition and then worked closely with Sabia and Tellier on the privatization of CN.
So far, Michael Sabia has slipped in under the radar. He's not even listed in the Canadian Who's Who. But his wife, Hilary Pearson, is and there is a story in that. They met at the U of T, in their very first year and married in 1983 when they were both civil servants. She is the granddaughter of a Liberal prime minister; he is the son of the feminist firebrand who ran for the Tories and routinely threatened Mike Pearson with all manner of political devastation. An establishment marriage? Their daughter's name is Laura. Author ROBERT SHEPPARD
President and Chief Operating Officer - Rogers Communications Inc.
Mr. Mohamed joined Rogers Wireless in August of 2000 as President and Chief Operating Officer. In July 2001, Mr. Mohamed was promoted to President and CEO of Rogers Wireless Inc., and, under his leadership, Rogers Wireless saw 13 consecutive quarters of double digit network revenue growth, 14 consecutive quarters of double digit operating profit growth, and improved free cash flow from in excess of negative $800 million in 2001 to over $270 million positive in 2004. As well, during his tenure as CEO at Rogers Wireless, the Rogers Wireless stock price increased from $26.10 on July 1, 2001 to $54.56 at the end of 2004. In addition, Mr. Mohamed led Rogers Wireless through the acquisition of Microcell Telecommunications in November 2004, making Rogers Wireless the largest wireless carrier in Canada with more than 7.3 million customers from coast to coast.
In May 2005, Mr. Mohamed was promoted to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer of the Communications Division of Rogers. As President and Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Mohamed is responsible for the wireless, cable and telecom divisions, as a group representing approximately $9.1 billion in revenue and over $3.6 billion operating income.
For the nine months ending September 30, 2006, the Communications Group delivered 30% in revenue growth and 35% in operating income growth.
Mr. Mohamed is on the Board of Rogers Communications. Mr. Mohamed is also on the Board of Governors for Ryerson University and TD Bank Financial Group. 51 years old Nadir H. Mohamed, resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and has been a director of RCI and President and Chief Operating Officer, Communications Group since May 2005. Mr. Mohamed joined Rogers Wireless in August 2000 as President and Chief Operating Officer and served as President and Chief Executive Officer from July 2001 to May 2005. Prior to joining Rogers Wireless, Mr. Mohamed served as President and Chief Operating Officer of BC Tel Mobility from August 1997 to January 1999. Between February 1999 and August 2000, Mr. Mohamed was Senior Vice President, Marketing and Sales for Telus Communications Inc. Mr. Mohamed is a member of Ryerson University's Board of Governors. Mr. Mohamed holds an undergraduate degree from the University of British Columbia and is a Chartered Accountant.
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