Derek DeCloet has an excellent profile of Fairfax Financial's Prem Watsa, who is the Globe and Mail's CEO of the year. The article begins with how Watsa has reluctantly started giving more press interviews:
But that doesn't mean he likes it. And it doesn't mean he wants the
attention any more than he did a decade ago, before all the trouble
started, when he was still labelled a "recluse" and Bay Street loved
him and his peculiar creation, insurance and investment company Fairfax
Financial Holdings Ltd. Over the decades, The Globe and Mail has
named dozens of CEOs of the Year. Prem Watsa is the first, as far as
anyone can recall, who tried to reject the honour. Vehemently.
This further down:
Then, in the summer of 2007, Watsa gathered key Fairfax executives at a
retreat in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. One of the speakers was James
Grant, the editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, a
highly respected investment newsletter. He mentioned that two
credit-oriented hedge funds at Bear Stearns had just blown up. The
reckoning had begun.
Great stuff. Read the entire thing.
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