Wall Financial Corporation

Peter Wall is a German-born Canadian businessman and philanthropist. He is a property developer in Vancouver, Canada who, in the 1990s and 2000s, played a significant and controversial part in the city's real-estate boom. He has been described as "a leading contributor to Vancouver's 'City of Glass' reputation" during a period in which the city's skyline has been transformed, along with its economic and social profile. Rejecting the label "developer", Wall has stated that he "just make[s] some money investing in business ideas and projects".

Wall emigrated from Eastern Europe to Canada as a child, shortly after the Second World War. During the 1990s, when Vancouver was changing from a provincial port tied to the British Columbian lumber industry to a major multicultural gateway for immigrants from around the Pacific Rim, Wall and his company Wall Financial Corporation helped revitalize the city's downtown area. In the process, Wall benefitted from and propelled a property boom that continues to this day. His career has earned him both criticism and praise.

Wall has been described as the city's "ultimate business maverick" in the press, which depicts him as a colourful, flamboyant character. The controversial award-winning hotel and condominium tower, One Wall Centre, completed in 2001, is regarded as his crowning achievement. At the time of its construction, this skyscraper was the highest in Canada west of Toronto. By the end of 2008, One Wall Centre was overtaken by the 61-storey tower, Living Shangri-La. Wall is also known for his legal scrapes and for his personal and public generosity. He fought a protracted legal battle with the city over the height and cladding of One Wall Centre. He has been a significant donor to his alma mater, the University of British Columbia, in 1991 making what was then the largest donation in the university's history.

Wall was born to a German Mennonite family in Ukraine, and he spent his childhood in Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Austria. In 1948, he moved to Canada with his mother and five siblings. The family settled in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Wall enrolled at the University of British Columbia in 1958, where he studied chemistry but did not graduate. Given C$6,000 by his mother to build a house, he sold the finished product for $13,000 before she had moved in. He later claimed he "discovered right then how easy it was to make money in the real-estate business". Despite his early exit from academia, he donated $15 million to UBC in 1991, at the time the largest private donation it had received. The university used the gift to found the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. In 1995, UBC awarded Wall an honorary doctorate. His degree citation credited him with "a creative and innovative mind which allows him to bring unconventional solutions to otherwise insoluble problems".

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