Richard Currie

Richard James Currie OC was born in 1937 in Saint John, New Brunswick, and is a notable Canadian businessman.

He began his post-secondary education at the University of New Brunswick in 1955, after receiving a Beaverbrook Scholarship to attend the institution, where he was elected president of the first-year class. He later received a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemistry degree from the Technical University of Nova Scotia in 1960 and, after working as an engineer until 1968, he decided to continue his education and get a Masters of Business Administration degree from Harvard University in 1970.

In 1960, he joined Atlantic Sugar Refineries as a Process Engineer and was a Refining Superintendent from 1963 to 1968. After graduating from Harvard in 1970, he became a Senior Associate at McKinsey & Co., a management consultant firm based in New York City.

In 1972, he joined Loblaws as a Vice-President, becoming Executive Vice-President in 1974, and President in 1976. Loblaws increased its market share over 350 times in 25 years while under his control, reaching $14 billion before he stepped down on December 31, 2000. Through this, it became the largest private sector employer in Canada.

In 1996, he was appointed President of Loblaws parent company, George Weston Ltd., where he increased the share price from $16 to $123. In 2002 he stepped down from Weston and was appointed Chairman of BCE Inc. on April 24 of that year.

He, along with Lynton Wilson, Anthony S. Fell, James Fleck, Hal Jackman and John McArthur, helped establish a chair in Canadian business history at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, which is the first chair of its kind in Canada. Worth $3 million, it will help fund courses and research related to the progress of the commerce industry in Canada, along with the legal, economic and political events that impacted its history.

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