Conferences & Events
May 1, 2008 "China Symposium"
On May 1, 2008, we hosted a China Symposium for over 300 of our clients at the Calgary Golf & Country Club. We were extremely honored to have the Right Honourable Jean Chretien, former Prime Minister of Canada, Gary Wilson, Dr. Sheldon Lui, and Dr. David Lee on a panel discussing the current political and economical issues in China. In addition, we addressed many of our clients’ questions about how to conduct business successfully inChina. J.F. Mackie & Company has been very active in China over the last year, successfully placing over $60 million of our client’s money through our partners at Clarity China Partners. Below we have included the introduction of our panel.
Our first speaker tonight is one of the most recognizable politicians in Canadian history. The Right Honorable Jean Chrétien was first elected to federal office in 1963 at the age of 29. He assumed a cabinet position in 1967 and over the next 17 years he held every major cabinet portfolio, including Finance and Justice. Mr. Chrétien was leader of the Liberal party of Canadafrom 1990-2003 and was Canada’s Prime Minister for ten years from November 1993 to December 2003.
To say that Mr. Chrétien’s political resume is an impressive one would be an understatement, but to those of us who have been close to the evolution of Canada-China government relations, it is Mr. Chrétien’s efforts to strengthen the Canada-China relationship that may be the most long-lasting legacy of his time in office. As leader of our country, Mr. Chrétien visited China six times as Canada’s Prime Minister and met with China’s Presidents a total of 18 times. I have had the pleasure to accompany Mr. Chrétien on one of his trade missions to Chinaand was also a guest of Mr. Chrétien in Ottawa on the last official dinner he had as Prime Minister of Canada when he hosted Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao in December 2003. I can assure you, his efforts are not forgotten in mainland China by the Chinese government or by Canadian business people who have been working hard to try and better penetrate the Chinese marketplace. In my own view, there is no better politician in Canada’s history to speak on the unique and complex relationship that has been forged between our country and China.
Our second speaker tonight is Mr. Gary Wilson. Mr. Wilson has an impressive track record – as principal, executive and director – with some of the world’s largest and most recognizable organizations.
After obtaining his undergraduate degree from Duke University and an MBA from the Wharton School of Finance, Mr. Wilson began his career in Manila as CFO of Trans-Philippines Investment Corp; one of the world’s largest raw sugar producers, which he then helped transform into one of Asia’s largest construction companies.
After returning from Asia, Mr. Wilson joined Marriott Hotels in 1974. As Executive Vice President for Finance, Strategy and Development, he was instrumental in the growth of Marriott’s market capitalization from $200 million in 1974 to $3.6 billion in 1987, principally by hotel expansion through innovative financing techniques.
In 1985, Mr. Wilson joined the Walt Disney Company as Executive Vice President of Finance, Strategy and Development. During his time at Disney, market capitalization increased from $2 billion to $20 billion. Among his accomplishments at Disney were increasing hotel rooms from 4,000 in 1985 to 18,000 rooms in 1992, introducing timesharing based on the Marriott model which led to Disney becoming a leader in this profitable lodging segment and developing the Euro Disney Theme Park Complex in Paris from site selection to financing, which culminated in one of Europe’s largest IPOs.
Mr. Wilson was also a principal in the ground-breaking buyout of Northwest Airlines in 1989. In 1997, as Chairman of Northwest, he acquired control of Continental Airlines. Prior to the 9/11 disaster, Northwest’s market capitalization reached $6 billion, providing investors with handsome returns on their $300 million initial equity investment. He served as Chairman or co-Chairman of Northwest from 1991 to 2007.
Mr. Wilson was the longest serving member on Disney’s Board of Directors with 20 years of service and is currently a director of two public companies: Yahoo! Inc. and CB Richard Ellis and is a general partner of the Clarity China Fund.
Mr. Wilson is one of the most notable executives in U.S. business history as he has been credited with transforming the CFO role from that of an accountant to that of a financial architect instrumental in a company’s growth.
Our third speaker tonight is Dr. Sheldon Liu. Dr. Liu emigrated to the US from China, and holds a medical degree from Shanghai Second Medical School in China and earned his MBA from Pepperdine University in California. Dr. Liu was a pediatric surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angelas and a pediatric surgery fellow of the University of Southern California.
Dr. Liu was the founder and Managing director of the New Era Group, an advanced manufacturing company with operations in the US, Hong Kong & China. The US Dept of Commerce sited the New Era Group as being one of the largest exporters of American high-tech goods and services to China during the early 1980’s.
Dr. Liu developed very strong industry and government contacts in China over the years and was the only exclusive China agent to Ford Motor Company and exclusive franchisor to Budget Rent-a-Car in China. Dr. Liu has also served as senior China advisor to many multinational companies including Northwest Airlines, Alitalia, Worldspan, Samsung Electronics, KLM, Cummins Inc. and Yahoo! Inc.
Our fourth and final speaker tonight is Dr. David Lee. Dr. Lee is a co-founder and Managing General Partner of Clarity Partners. Dr. Lee has been involved with the telecommunications industry since the early 1980’s, where he held various executive positions with Comcast and TRW Information Systems. In 1989 he left TRW to pursue his interest in private equity investments and joined Pacific Capital Group where he was instrumental in expanding the firm into the telecommunications market. In 1997, he co-founded Global Crossing, creators of the world’s first global IP-based network, serving as President and CEO until early 2000 when he left to co-found Clarity Partners.
Dr. Lee is a graduate of McGill University and holds a Doctorate in Physics with a minor in Economics from the California Institute of Technology. He has established Centres for Advanced Networking at the California Institute of Technology as well as at the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. Dr. Lee is also a trustee for both CalTech and University of Southern California.
Our moderator for this evening’s discussion is Ms. Andrea Mandel-Campbell. Ms. Mandel-Campbell was the Mexico bureau chief for London's Financial Times as well as the correspondent for Business Week magazine in Argentina. During her ten years as a journalist in Latin America, she reported from Cuba, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Honduras. After returning to Canada in 2002, she was a feature writer at the National Post, specializing in global competitiveness issues. In 2006, she was awarded a Media Fellowship from the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada to travel to China and write a series of articles for Maclean's on Canada-China business ties.
Ms. Mandel-Campbell is a the author of the book, Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson: Rescuing Canadian Companies From the Suds of Global Obscurity.
Ms Mandel-Campbell’s book is the accumulation of her international experience and of three years spent interviewing Canadian business leaders, government officials, academics, and industry consultants across the country and abroad. Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson is the most comprehensive picture to date of why Canadian companies have failed to embrace international markets.
David Whyte grew up in Yorkshire, England. He studied Marine Zoology in Wales and
trained as a naturalist in the Galapagos Islands. He has also worked as a guide, leading
anthropological and natural history expeditions in various parts of the world, including
treks among the mountains of Nepal.
Whyte's poetry reflects a living spirituality and a deep connection to the natural world.
He is one of the few poets to take his perspectives on creativity into the field of organizational development, conducting workshops with many American and international companies.
Some of his Publications are The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, The House of Belonging and Everything is waiting for you.
Alloy Orchestra is a three man musical ensemble, writing and performing live accompaniment to classic silent films. Working with an outrageous assemblage of peculiar objects, they thrash and grind soulful music from unlikely sources.
Performing at prestigious film festivals and cultural centers in the US and abroad (The Telluride Film Festival, The Louvre, Lincoln Center, The Academy of Motion Pictures, the National Gallery of Art and others), Alloy has helped revive some of the great masterpieces of the silent era.
An unusual combination of found percussion and state-of-the-art electronics gives the Orchestra the ability to create any sound imaginable. Utilizing their famous "rack of junk" and electronic synthesizers, the group generates beautiful music in a spectacular variety of styles. They can conjure up a French symphony or a simple German bar band of the 20's. The group can make the audience think it is being attacked by tigers, contacted by radio signals from Mars or swept up in the Russian Revolution.
Alloy collaborates with some of the worlds best archives and collectors (such as the George Eastman House, The British Film Institute, Paramount pictures, Film Preservation Associates and The Douris Corporation) to present audiences with the very best available prints of some of history's greatest film.
An evening guaranteed to inspire,
enlighten and inform!
In the wake of Enron, WorldCom, and a host of other scandals, the staid world of corporate governance has been shaken to its core. The topic of how companies are run, and not just how much money they make, has become the hottest business issue of our times. Kurt Eichenwald, an author and senior writer and investigative reporter at The New York Times, is one of the world’s leading commentators on this vital topic.
In his current bestseller “Conspiracy of Fools; A True Story” Eichenwald offers a fascinating exploration of the greatest corporate scandal in history, helping readers to understand what happened, how, and why. The book has made Eichenwald one of the most talked about business journalists in America.
Some of his other Publications are The Informant: A True Story, Serpent on the Rock, Participant Guide for Wall Street, and The Informant.
Patricia O'Callaghan was born and raised in Northern Ontario. At seventeen she lived in Mexico for a year as an exchange student. It was there that she had an epiphany one day and decided she should become an opera singer. Up until that time she could not decide whether to become a rock star or a nun and she thought opera was the perfect melding of the two: all the discipline and undebauched life of a nun, but she would still get to sing. She trained at the University of Toronto and the Banff Centre for the Arts.
Some of her Contributions and Collaborations are Naked Beauty, Real Emotional Girl, Slow Fox and Youkali.
Rick Mercer is one of this country’s most highly respected comedic writer/actors.
In the spring of 2001, Mercer made comedy history in Canada by creating and co- producing the one hour CBC special, Rick Mercer’s Talking to Americans, which attracted 2.7 million viewers across Canada, making it the highest rated comedy special in the history of Canadian television. His outstanding contribution to comedy with a political punch has been recognized with 20 Gemini Awards for both writing and performing on the top- rated series This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Made In Canada. His CBC Show, Rick Mercer’s Monday Report, is a national hit.
Dr. Pearsall is one of the most requested speakers in the world. He has appeared regularly
on shows including CNN, NBC’s Dateline, The today Show, ABC’s 20/20 and Oprah.
He is a certified neuropsychologist, a Clinical Professor at the University of Hawaii, and
a member of The Board of the state of Hawaii Consortium for Integrative Health Care.
Dr. Pearsall was educated in the Unites States and went on to design and serve as chief of the outpatient clinic in the Department of Psychiatry at Sinai Hospital, where he received the Rush Gold Medal from the World Congress of Psychiatry for his contributions to preventive psychiatry.
Dr. Pearsall has Published over 300 professional journal articles and his books have all been translated into several languages. His current best-seller is titled The last Self- Help book You’ll Ever Need: Repress Your Anger, Think Negatively, Be a Good Blamer, and Throttle Your Inner Child.
Jerry Kobalenko has spent the past 15 years exploring Ellesmere Island, covering more frozen tundra there than anyone else alive. He travels on foot, pulling a sled full of food and gear. That’s it! No dogs, no phone, no radio.
Kobalenko makes one of the world’s most remote places much more accessible to one’s imagination. Part travelogue, part historical research, part natural science and part adventure mystery, Kobalenko’s presentation describes the personal and physical effort of the arctic experience.
Some of his Publications are:
Forest Cats of North America
The Horizontal Everest: Extreme Journeys on Ellesmere Island
Major General (Ret.) Lewis MacKenzie is one of Canada’s most noted leaders.
Considered to be one of the most experienced peacekeepers in the world, his guidance
and courage came to the fore in Sarajevo. He has commanded ground troops in the
world’s most dangerous places: the Gaza strip, Cyprus, Vietnam, Cairo and Central
America.
Mackenzie’s expertise on conflict resolution, his innovative thinking, and his natural talent for storytelling make his presentations extremely compelling.
General Mackenzie retired from the Canadian Forces in March 1999. His book, “Peacekeeper: The Road to Sarajevo,” is a personal account of his peacekeeping experiences, and became a number one bestseller in 1993. The film “A Soldier’s Peace,” based on the book, has aired in over 60 countries and was granted a New York Film Festival award in 1996.
Dr. Mullis has been passionate about chemistry since childhood. He graduated from
Georgia Tech in 1966 with a B.Sc. and then with his Ph.d in Biochemistry in 1972 from
the University of California at Berkley. Dr. Mullis received both the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry and the Japan Prize for his invention of the Polymerase Chain Reaction
Process (PCR) in 1993. PCR is hailed as one of the monumental scientific techniques
developed in the twentieth century. It has many applications in medicine, genetic
research, biotechnology and forensics.
Dr. Mullis has been an Expert Witness/ Consultant in forensic DNA for the Superior Court on numerous occasions, including the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995. In addition to many scientific publications, Dr Mullis published an autobiographical book titled “Dancing Naked in the Mind Field”. He is a frequent lecturer at academic meetings around the world and serves as a scientific advisor for several biotechnology companies.
His many publications include "The Cosmological Significance of Time Reversal" (Nature), "The Unusual Origin of the Polymerase Chain Reaction" (Scientific American), "Primer-directed Enzymatic Amplification of DNA with a Thermostable DNA Polymerase" (Science), and "Specific Synthesis of DNA In Vitro via a Polymerase Catalyzed Chain Reaction" (Methods in Enzymology).
