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Prem Watsa

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Nationality
  
Canada

Spouse
  
Nalini Loganadhan


Name
  
Prem Watsa

Occupation
  
Businessman

Siblings
  
David Watsa

Prem Watsa staticdnaindiacomsitesdefaultfiles1893455jpg

Born
  
August 5, 1950 (age 74) (
1950-08-05
)

Alma mater
  
Net worth
  
US$1.0 billion (April 2015)

Board member of
  
Children
  
Stephanie Watsa, Christine Watsa, Ben Watsa

Parents
  
Irene Watsa, Manohar Clarence Watsa


Organizations founded
  
Fairfax Financial


Similar
  
John S Chen, Mike Lazaridis, Nirmal Jain

Meet blackberry buyer india born prem watsa


Prem Watsa (born 1950) is a Canadian businessman who is the founder, chairman, and chief executive of Fairfax Financial Holdings, based in Toronto. He has been called the "Canadian Warren Buffett."

Contents

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Early life and education

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Watsa was born in Hyderabad, India. He attended Hyderabad Public School and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras where he graduated with a degree in chemical engineering. Watsa later moved to London, Ontario and went to the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario where he earned an MBA. Watsa left India with 8 rupees and sold furnaces and air conditioners to financially support his university education. He is a distinguished alumnus of IIT Madras.

Career

Prem Watsa Prem Watsa Sticks With His 700 Million Bet On BlackBerry

After graduating, Watsa worked for the insurance company Confederation Life. In 1984, he started an investment firm with his former boss Tony Hamblin called Hamblin Watsa Investment Counsel. In 1985, Watsa took over Markel Financial, a small Canadian trucking insurance company that was verging on bankruptcy, and renamed it Fairfax Financial Holdings. Watsa helped grow the company, where it reached annual revenues of $8 billion a year in 2012. Despite his success, Watsa largely stayed out of the public eye, only beginning to hold investor conference calls in 2001.

Prem Watsa Watsa Says DotCom Rally to 39End in Tears39 Bloomberg

On January 22, 2012, it was reported he was to be appointed to the board of directors of Research In Motion (RIM) in the company's largest ever corporate shakeup. Watsa resigned in August 2013, but kept his investment in the company. On September 23, 2013, BlackBerry announced that it had signed a letter of intent to be acquired by Fairfax Financial Holdings in a $4.7 billion deal.

In April of 2017, Watsa brought attention to concerns of a real estate bubble in Toronto. Watsa asserts that most Canadian banks cannot survive a 50% drop in the value of real estate. "It's going to come down, and a lot of people are going to get hurt" said Watsa during Fairfax's annual general meeting.

Volunteering

He is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Hospital for Sick Children, a member of the Advisory Board for the Richard Ivey School of Business, a member of the Board of Directors of the Royal Ontario Museum Foundation and as well as Chairman of the Investment Committee of St. Paul’s Anglican Church.

In June 2009, he was appointed as the ninth chancellor of the University of Waterloo.

He was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015.

References

Prem Watsa Wikipedia


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