In this engaging book, award-winning business writer Rod McQueen examines how the pugnacious personality and hard-driving leadership style of Dominic D'Alessandro led Manulife Financial to its position as one of the largest and most profitable life insurance companies in North America, and the fourth largest in the world. From D'Alessandro's role in the successful demutualization and conversion of the company to public company status in 1999, which set the stage for Manulife to become a wo...

Chances are…you are looking at yours right now. They are--quite literally--everywhere. US President Barack Obama admits he cannot live without it. Oprah Winfrey, reigning queen of daytime TV, declared on air that the BlackBerry is one of her "favorite things." BusinessWeek put the case for owning one bluntly in an article entitled simply: "No BlackBerry. No Life." From its relatively modest debut in 1999, the BlackBerry has emerged almost overnight to become the most necessary and sought afte...

How does a venerable institution adapt quickly to sometimes volatile global markets and shifting domestic demands of the late twentieth century?In A History of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Volume 5 1973–1999, the story of CIBC unfolds amidst a backdrop of world-changing events, economic booms and busts, and memorable moments in Canadian history. This era of the bank saw challenges such as the OPEC crisis and recession-driven collapses of iconic companies like Massey...

Frank Hasenfratz grew up in Hungary learning to dodge bullets and avoid land mines during the Second World War. When the 1956 revolution erupted, he and his army unit joined the insurgents. After the revolution was crushed, he fled to Guelph, Ontario, where he gambled everything on a one-man operation making oil pumps for Ford. The company he founded, Linamar, today has 15,000 employees in eight countries and is the second-largest maker of auto parts in Canada. To create this global empire...

"At a certain point in our lives we are left only with our close relationships and our clear recollections." So begins Thumper: The Memoirs of the Honourable Donald S. Macdonald.An early supporter of Pierre Trudeau for the Liberal Party leadership, Donald Macdonald has had a career in public life spanning four decades that included posts as House leader, minister of national defence, minister of energy, and minister of finance. He chaired the landmark Royal Commission on t...

A refreshingly honest memoir about politics and private lifeFew Canadians have served their nation as well and as widely as the Honourable Darcy McKeough. He was elected Member of Provincial Parliament for Chatham–Kent, Ontario, five times between 1963 and 1977. In 1967 he was mockingly dubbed the Duke of Kent by an opposition MPP, a title he has worn as a badge of honour ever since. As Treasurer of Ontario, Minister of Municipal Affairs, and Minister of E...