Prem Watsa
| Prem Watsa | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
August 5, 1950 Hyderabad, India |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Alma mater | University of Western Ontario, IIT Madras |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Net worth | US$1.1 billion (September 2016) |
| Board member of | Chairman of Fairfax Financial Holdings |
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."
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 and sold furnaces and air conditioners to financially support his university education. He is a distinguished alumnus of IIT Madras.
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.
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.
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