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In April 2014, O'Leary Mortgages went out of business. Little over a year after launching with much fanfare and notoriety including weekly plugs on his ''[[Dragons' Den (Canada)|Dragons' Den]]'' prologue, O'Leary was unable to keep one of his 3 core businesses afloat. Industry reports seemed unsurprised by the failure, given O'Leary's confusing public persona and the lack of industry experience of the company's Chief Executive Officer Alexey Kenjeev.<ref>McLister, Rob. [http://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/canadian_mortgage_trends/2014/04/oleary-mortgages-is-no-more.html "O'Leary Mortgages Is No More"]. ''[[CanadianMortgageTrends.com]]''. 10 April 2014</ref>
In April 2014, O'Leary Mortgages went out of business. Little over a year after launching with much fanfare and notoriety including weekly plugs on his ''[[Dragons' Den (Canada)|Dragons' Den]]'' prologue, O'Leary was unable to keep one of his 3 core businesses afloat. Industry reports seemed unsurprised by the failure, given O'Leary's confusing public persona and the lack of industry experience of the company's Chief Executive Officer Alexey Kenjeev.<ref>McLister, Rob. [http://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/canadian_mortgage_trends/2014/04/oleary-mortgages-is-no-more.html "O'Leary Mortgages Is No More"]. ''[[CanadianMortgageTrends.com]]''. 10 April 2014</ref>


O'Leary has also ventured into [[gold as an investment|gold investing]], where he holds a 5 percent weighting in his financial portfolio but does not gold stocks issued by gold mining companies due to poor management and rising costs. In addition, when looking a stock, O'Leary is also insistent on whether the stock pays a dividend, as the concept of [[cash flow]], is very important to him when analyzing a stock.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/kitconews/2012/05/09/kevin-olearys-cold-hard-truth-on-gold-investing/1/ | title=Kevin O'Leary's 'Cold, Hard, Truth' on Gold Investing | publisher=Forbes | date=05/09/2012 | accessdate=9 November 2014}}</ref>
O'Leary has also ventured into [[gold as an investment|gold investing]], where he holds a 5 percent weighting in his financial portfolio but does not gold stocks issued by gold mining companies due to poor management and rising costs. In addition, when looking a stock, O'Leary is also insistent on whether the stock pays a dividend, as the concept of [[cash flow]], is very important to him when analyzing a stock.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/kitconews/2012/05/09/kevin-olearys-cold-hard-truth-on-gold-investing/1/ | title=Kevin O'Leary's 'Cold, Hard, Truth' on Gold Investing | publisher=Forbes | date=05/09/2012 | accessdate=9 November 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.ontariofarmer.com/sitepages/?aid=3544&cn=TO%20SUBSCRIBE%20TO%20ONTARIO%20FARMER&an=Three%20investment%20tips%20from%20a%20dragon | title=Three investment tips from a dragon | publisher=Ontario Farmer | accessdate=9 November 2014}}</ref> O'Leary also advises diversification where no more than 20% of one's financial portfolio should be focused on one sector.<ref>{{cite book | title=Cold Hard Truth On Men, Women, and Money | publisher=Simon and Schuster | author=O'Leary, Kevin}}</ref>


== Bibliography ==
== Bibliography ==

Revision as of 05:18, 10 November 2014

For other uses, see Kevin O'Leary (disambiguation).

Kevin O'Leary
File:Kevin O'Leary (entrepreneur, reality show personality).jpg
O'Leary in March 2011
Born (1954-07-09) 9 July 1954 (age 69)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Alma materUniversity of Waterloo
University of Western Ontario
Occupation(s)Founder of
O'Leary Financial Group
ChildrenTrevor & Savannah O'Leary
WebsiteOfficial website

Kevin O'Leary (born 9 July 1954) is a Canadian entrepreneur, investor, journalist, writer, financial commentator and television personality.

Early life and education

O'Leary was born in Montreal to a salesman father and seamstress mother.[2]

His father was Irish Canadian and his mother was of Lebanese Canadian.[3] O'Leary's parents divorced when he was young, and his father died shortly thereafter. His mother, Georgette, later remarried.[4] He attended Stanstead College[5] and St. George's School.[6]

After graduating from high school, O'Leary studied for two years at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean followed by the University of Waterloo,[7] where he received an honours bachelor's degree in environmental studies and anthropology.[8] In 1980, he earned an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at The University of Western Ontario.

Career

Immediately after college, O'Leary and two friends launched Special Event Television (SET), a television production company that met limited success producing small television shows and in-between-periods commercials and local professional hockey games. Later he was bought out for $25,000 by one of his partners.

O'Leary then moved on to his second business venture, a software company in the basement of a small Toronto home along with partners John Freeman and Gary Babcock. His mother provided the seed investment capital of $10,000, which he used to start software publisher SoftKey. Softkey products typically consisted of software intended for home audiences, especially compilation discs containing various freeware or shareware game software packaged in a "jewel-case" CD-ROM. By 1994, Softkey had become a major consolidator in the educational software market, acquiring no fewer than 60 rivals, such as WordStar and Spinnaker Software.

In 1995, Softkey acquired The Learning Company (TLC) for $606 million, moved its headquarters to Boston, and took The Learning Company as its name. TLC bought its former rival Brøderbund in June 1998 for $416 million. In 1999, TLC and its 467 software titles were acquired by Mattel in a $3.8 billion stock swap.[9] Sales and earnings for Mattel soon dropped, and O'Leary departed from Mattel. The purchase by Mattel was later called one of the most disastrous acquisitions in history.[10]

In 2003, he became a co-investor and director in Storage Now, a 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 11 cities serving such companies as Merck and Pfizer when it was acquired by the In Storage REIT in March 2007 for $110 million.[citation needed]

In March 2007, O'Leary joined the advisory board of Genstar Capital, a private equity firm that focuses on investments in selected segments of life science and healthcare services, industrial technology, business services and software. Genstar Capital appointed O'Leary to its Strategic Advisory Board to seek new investment opportunities for its $1.2 billion fund. 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 of EnGlobe, a TSX listed company.[citation needed] He is a former co-host of SqueezePlay on Business News Network, Canada’s national business television specialty channel. O’Leary is currently working as the entrepreneur, investor, and co-host for the Discovery Channel’s Discovery Project Earth, a project that explores innovative ways man could reverse climate change.[11]

In September 2011, O'Leary released his book, Cold Hard Truth: On Business, Money & Life, wherein he shares his secrets, experiences, insights, and lessons on entrepreneurship, business, finance, money and life as well as advice for budding entrepreneurs.[12] A sequel to his first book called The Cold Hard Truth On Men, Women, and Money: 50 Common Money Mistakes and How to Fix Them was followed up in 2012, which focused a greater emphasis toward personal financial money management techniques, common money mistakes, tricks and tips to earn more financial freedom each targeted toward a specific stage in a person's life.[13]

Business journalism

O'Leary served as foil to journalist Amanda Lang on The Lang and O'Leary Exchange on CBC News Network, and he also appeared as a venture capitalist on the Canadian television show Dragons' Den until departing CBC in late 2014. Since 2009 he has been a shark on the American version of Dragons' Den, Shark Tank, which airs on ABC. He is referred to as "Mr. Wonderful" and "The Undertaker" by Mark Cuban on that show. He has also hosted his own television show, Redemption Inc.

During a segment on the Occupy Wall Street protests on 6 October 2011 episode of the CBC News Network's The Lang & O'Leary Exchange, O'Leary criticized Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges for sounding "like a left-wing nutbar." Hedges stated afterwards that "it will be the last time [he appears on the show]" and compared the CBC to Fox News.[14] CBC's ombudsman found O'Leary's behaviour to be a violation of the public broadcaster's journalistic standards.[15]

In August 2013, O'Leary interviewed Rachel Parent, a 14-year-old anti-GMO foods activist. In the interview, O'Leary expressed concern that Parent had become a "shill" for environmentalists. The video went viral on social media.[16]

In January 2014, O'Leary remarked on his television show The Lang and O'Leary Exchange that the news that the world's richest 85 people owned as much wealth as the bottom half of the global population was "fantastic news."

It's fantastic and this is a great thing because it inspires everybody, gets them motivation to look up to the one percent and say, ‘I want to become one of those people, I’m going to fight hard to get up to the top.' This is fantastic news and of course I applaud it. What can be wrong with this? I celebrate capitalism. Don't tell me that you want to redistribute wealth again, that's never gonna happen ... it's a celebratory stat. ... If you work hard, you might be stinking rich one day.[17][18][19]

O'Leary left CBC in August 2014 after five years with the Lang and O'Leary Exchange;[20] earlier that year it had been announced that he was leaving Dragon's Den after eight seasons.[21] O'Leary joins CTV/Bell Media on September 1, 2014, where he will appear on various programs including Canada AM, eTalk, The Marilyn Denis Show and The Social and will also be providing financial commentary on other Bell properties such as BNN and radio stations CFRA, CJAD and CFRB.[22]

Business ventures and investments

Having carved out a niche for the O'Leary brand in the software industry, O'Leary moved on to establish the O'Leary name and brand in a multitude of industries, companies and products. Following his successful business ventures in software, storage facilities, and private equity, O'Leary has established his name in a number of other industries, including O'Leary Funds (a mutual and investment fund management firm that handles over $1.5 billion), O'Leary Ventures (a private early-stage investment company that invests in and partners with early-stage, high-growth-potential companies in various Canadian industries),[23] O'Leary Mortgages (a mortgage firm), O'Leary books, and O'Leary Fine Wines (a winemaking company).[24][25] In April 2014, O'Leary Mortgages went out of business. Little over a year after launching with much fanfare and notoriety including weekly plugs on his Dragons' Den prologue, O'Leary was unable to keep one of his 3 core businesses afloat. Industry reports seemed unsurprised by the failure, given O'Leary's confusing public persona and the lack of industry experience of the company's Chief Executive Officer Alexey Kenjeev.[26]

O'Leary has also ventured into gold investing, where he holds a 5 percent weighting in his financial portfolio but does not gold stocks issued by gold mining companies due to poor management and rising costs. In addition, when looking a stock, O'Leary is also insistent on whether the stock pays a dividend, as the concept of cash flow, is very important to him when analyzing a stock.[27][28] O'Leary also advises diversification where no more than 20% of one's financial portfolio should be focused on one sector.[29]

Bibliography

  • Cold Hard Truth: On Business, Money & Life. Doubleday Canada. 2011. ISBN 978-0385671743
  • Cold Hard Truth on Men, Women & Money. Doubleday Canada. 2012. ISBN 978-0-385-67850-6

References

  1. ^ "Kevin O'Leary Net Worth". celebritynetworth.com. Retrieved 21 January 2014.
  2. ^ Allemang, John. "Kevin O’Leary: The shark who swims alone". The Globe and Mail. 23 September 2011
  3. ^ Schlesinger, Joel. "The dragon's pen: Reality TV villain writes about life and money in new autobiography". Winnipeg Free Press. 1 October 2011
  4. ^ "Obituary". Retrieved 24 March 2012.
  5. ^ http://www.cbc.ca/breakaway/2011/10/13/kevin-oleary-on-business-and-his-townships-past/
  6. ^ http://www.themontrealeronline.com/2012/02/kevin-oleary/
  7. ^ Campbell, Colin. "In conversation: Kevin O’Leary". Maclean's. 5 October 2011
  8. ^ O'Leary, Kevin. (2012) Cold Hard Truth on Men, Women & Money. Doubleday Canada, page 106
  9. ^ Dignan, Larry. [O'Leary Kevin, (2011) The Cold Hard Truth On Business, Money, and Life, Anchor Canada, Page 135]. ZDNet. 14 December 1998
  10. ^ "The Worst Deals of All Time?". Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  11. ^ http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/project-earth/task-force/task-force.html
  12. ^ "Kevin O'Leary: The shark who swims alone - The Globe and Mail". Retrieved 6 August 2012.
  13. ^ "Order your copy of Cold Hard Truth On Men, Women & Money". Double Day. Retrieved 25 July 2013.
  14. ^ James Crugnale (12 October 2011). Journalist Chris Hedges Argues With CBC’s Kevin O’Leary: ‘This Sounds Like Fox News And I Don’t Go On Fox News!’ Mediaite. Retrieved 24 January 2014.
  15. ^ Szklarski, Cassandra. "O’Leary’s ‘nutbar’ remark breach of policy, CBC ombudsman says." Globe & Mail, 14 October 2011. Retrieved 2012-03-23.
  16. ^ Video on YouTube
  17. ^ Kludt, Tom (22 January 2014). Businessman, TV Host: It's 'Fantastic' That 85 People Have More Wealth Than Billions In Poverty (VIDEO). Talking Points Memo. Retrieved 22 January 2014.
  18. ^ Martin, Abby (23 January 2014). Orwell’s Kiev, warnings from BP employees, 4 years of corporate personhood. Breaking the Set on RT. Retrieved 24 January 2014.
  19. ^ Hulsman, Noel (22 January 2014). Kevin O’Leary thinks global wealth gap is ‘fantastic news’. Yahoo News. Retrieved 31 January 2014.
  20. ^ CBC Communications (August 11, 2104). "Kevin O'Leary to leave CBC News". Canada News Wire. Retrieved August 11, 2014. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  21. ^ "Kevin O'Leary, Bruce Croxon leaving CBC's Dragon's Den". CBC.ca. 13 March 2014. Retrieved 14 March 2014.
  22. ^ "Former 'Dragon' Kevin O'Leary leaves CBC to join CTV". Toronto Star. 12 August 2014. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
  23. ^ "About O'Leary Ventures". O'Leary Ventures. Retrieved 25 July 2013.
  24. ^ "O'Leary Wines". Retrieved 25 July 2013.
  25. ^ "O'Leary Fine Wines Wins "Best Value" at InterVin International Wine Awards". Retrieved 25 July 2013.
  26. ^ McLister, Rob. "O'Leary Mortgages Is No More". CanadianMortgageTrends.com. 10 April 2014
  27. ^ "Kevin O'Leary's 'Cold, Hard, Truth' on Gold Investing". Forbes. 05/09/2012. Retrieved 9 November 2014. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  28. ^ "Three investment tips from a dragon". Ontario Farmer. Retrieved 9 November 2014.
  29. ^ O'Leary, Kevin. Cold Hard Truth On Men, Women, and Money. Simon and Schuster.

External links

Template:Dragons' Den (Canada)

Template:Persondata

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