Jim Pattison

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James (Jim) Allen Pattison, born October 1, 1928 is a Vancouver-based entrepreneur who is the Chairman, President, CEO, and sole owner of the Jim Pattison Group. The Jim Pattison Group is Canada’s 3rd largest privately held company and, in a recent survey by the Financial Post, the Jim Pattison Group was ranked as Canada’s 48th largest company. The Jim Pattison Group has more than 28,000 employees, and annual sales of $6.1 billion. With investments in Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Europe, Asia and Australia, his business interests include TV and radio stations, car dealerships, grocery store chains, magazine distribution, packaging, advertising, real estate development, fishing, financial services, and entertainment (including the Ripley's Believe It or Not! franchise).

His parents were Americans whose families moved to Canada around the turn of the century to homestead. At that time, the Canadian government gave farms to homesteaders who worked the land for 10 years. Jim's parents met in Luseland, Saskatchewan where his mother was a teacher and his father was the postmaster. Luseland had no hospital and his mother had to take a train to Saskatoon for the birth of her baby.

During the Great Depression, Pattison’s father, who was then a partner in a Ford car dealership in Luseland, lost all of his investments. The family was living in a $2 a month furnished attic in Saskatoon when his father became an evangelical Christian. Jim grew up in the church and later played the trumpet and organ in weekly services. His faith remains an important part of his life today.

When Pattison was six, his family settled permanently in Vancouver, where his father sold used cars. As an enterprising youth, Pattison began working on his own, first by selling garden seeds door-to-door and then subscriptions to the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies Home Journal. Next, he got a paper route and eventually, he became a swamper -- throwing papers off the truck to the "newsies". His next job was as a page boy in a hotel and when he was old enough to drive, he became a truck driver for the late edition newspapers, giving him his own swamper to throw the papers off the truck as he drove down the streets of Vancouver.

Pattison worked his way through the University of British Columbia. As a freshman, he worked as a pantryman on a railroad dining car. After that, he worked for a dealership washing used cars. Thinking like the entrepreneur he would eventually become, he began buying used cars for $150 each. He refurbished them and then sold them to students on campus for a $25 to $50 profit. When he was nine units short of graduation, Pattison left school to work full time managing a used car lot.

His employer bought a GM dealership and took Pattison with him to manage the used car side of the business. Pattison worked his way up to new car manager, and then became general manager of the dealership, making $6,000 a year. A customer came in one day and told Pattison he needed someone to manage his pots and pans business, guaranteeing him $50,000 a year. Pattison loved the car business, but felt he could not turn down that much money. He made $51,000 that year managing pots and pans salesmen, but went back to his previous GM job for $12,000 a year because of his passion for the car business.

The Jim Pattison Group began on May 8, 1961 when, at the age of 32, Pattison was able to get his own GM dealership, taking out a loan on his life insurance and home and borrowing the rest from GM. Four years later, he bought a struggling radio station. Through careful acquisitions and hands-on devotion to management details, by 1986 his companies were earning more than $1 billion in sales. That year, Pattison's company was deemed the largest in Canada owned by a single person. That same year, Pattison was chairman, president, and CEO for the World’s Fair, Expo 86 held in Vancouver, which attracted 56 countries and 22 million visitors to the city and raised more corporate contributions than the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Jim Pattison has served as a Director on a number of Boards, and is currently a director of Canfor Corporation, Bell Canada, Telesat Canada, and Canaccord Capital. He also serves as a Trustee on the Board of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

Mr. Pattison was appointed to the Order of Canada in April of 1987, and the Order of British Columbia on June 21, 1990. In 1992, he received the Governor General’s Commemorative Medal for the 125th Anniversary of Canada. He was inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame in 1996. He was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year – Lifetime Achievement Award in September of 2000, and the International Horatio Alger Award in Washington, DC in April of 2004. On September, 2004, he received the Canadian Leadership Award from the World Presidents' Organization.

He is married and has three children. In 1990 his daughter was kidnapped and spent 13 hours in captivity before Pattison paid a $200,000 ransom for her safe release. The kidnappers were teenagers who were caught after a local spending spree.[link]

Criticisms

Pattison became notorious for harsh management tactics at his car dealership. The salesmen with the lowest performance each month was fired as a warning to the others.

External links

BCE Inc.

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Jim Pattison

Criticisms

See also

External links