Kevin O'Leary (entrepreneur)

Kevin O'Leary (born 9 July, 1954 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian entrepreneur and venture capitalist.

As the son of a United Nations ILO official, O'Leary had the opportunity to live and be educated in Cambodia, Cyprus, Tunisia, Ethiopia, France and Switzerland.

Kevin attended the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada where in 1977 he received an Honours Bachelors degree in Environmental Studies and Psychology. He attended the University of Western Ontario where he received his MBA in 1980.

After working briefly as an assistant product manager at Nabisco Brands, he left to pursue a career in television production and became a founding partner in Special Event Television, an independent production company that produced original sports programming such as “The Original Six”, “Don Cherry’s Grapevine” and “Bobby Orr and the Hockey Legends”.

He founded software publisher SoftKey. After numerous megers and acquisitions the company became The Learning Company and O’Leary took control as president. In 1999, the Learning Company was sold to Mattel for $3.7 billion USD. O’Leary left Mattel in 2000 surrounding a legal dispute over the financial condition of the company at the time of sale, in which a securities class action disputed that "Mattel and its top insiders knew or chose to disregard the truth about TLCs poor financial condition." [ THURBER vs. MATTEL, (1999) W. (California) U.S. District Court (http://securities.stanford.edu/1009/MAT99/20000706_r01c_9910368.html)] Mattel finally paid Alec Gores, of the Gores Technology Fund, to take over the business, retaining a small equity stake. [ Cresswell, J. (2001) "Would you give this man your company?" Fortune, May 28. Time, Inc. (http://www.gores.com/downloads/fortune_05282001_all.pdf)] In 2003 he became co-investor and a director in Storage Now, a leading developer of climate controlled storage facilities. Through a series of development projects and acquisitions, Storage Now became Canada’s third largest owner/operator of storage services with facilities located in eleven cities serving such companies as Merck and Pfizer when it was acquired by the In Storage REIT in March 2007 for $110 million.

In March 2007 O'Leary joined the advisory board of Genstar Capital, LLC a private equity firm that focuses on investments in selected segments of life science and healthcare services, industrial technology, business services and software named Kevin to its Strategic Advisory Board to seek new investment opportunities for its $1.2 billion fund.

Kevin O’Leary also serves on the executive board of The Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. He is a member of the investment committee of Boston’s 107 year old Hamilton Trust and an investor and director of EnGlobe, a TSX listed company. He is also a frequent co-host on Business News Network, Canada’s national business television specialty channel. Kevin O’Leary is currently working as the entrepreneur/investor co-host for the Discovery Channel’s “Discovery Project Earth” a new program that explores innovative ways man could reverse global warming.

Along with Amanda Lang, O'Leary co-hosts "SqueezePlay" on BNN. He also hosts a "O'Leary Live", a call-in show on BNN, and is one of the venture capitalists on the Canadian version of "Dragons' Den", which airs on CBC and CBC Newsworld.

He is on the board of directors of and serves in other capacities with several other companies and organizations.

He owns a cottage in Muskoka, Ontario where he, and his family, spend part of their summer. His cottage is located on Hamer Bay

References

External links

* [http://www.allgame.com/cg/agg.dll?p=agg&sql=4:2330 Biography at allgame]
* [http://www.bnn.ca/bios/bio-detail.tv/81 Biography at BNN (Formerly ROBTv)]
* [http://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/d03.html Biography at Dragon's Den]
* [http://www.emsolutions.com/investors.aspx Biography at Environmental Management Solutions]
* [http://securities.stanford.edu/1009/MAT99/20000706_r01c_9910368.html NORMA J. THURBER, et al., vs. MATTEL, INC.]