PREM WATSA CANADIAN BILLIONAIRE’S RAGS TO RICHES STORY

PREM WATSA

CANADIAN BILLIONAIRE’S RAGS TO RICHES STORY

Watsa was born in Hyderabad, India in 1950. He attended Hyderabad Public School and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Warsa graduated with a degree in chemical engineering. He left India and arrived in London, Ontario to live with his brother David and his wife with just $8 in his pocket in the winter of 1972.

In Canada, Prem Watsa went to the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario where he earned an MBA, in order to pay tuition he sold furnaces & air conditioners, he also sold stationery and small gifts door to door.

“It was in the snowbelt,” Watsa recounts. “And it was cold. I thought I’d not survive that. Oh my goodness. Lots of snow.

Prem Watsa gives credit for his financial & business success to his mother Irene, who raised Watsa along with 3 other siblings. His father, Mnohar Clarenca Warsa worked as the principal of a top boys’ school in India. Watsa notes that the secret behind his success has always been his father’s advice to him: “Work as hard as you can, as though everything depended on you. Pray as hard as you can, as though everything depended on God”

During his first summer in Canada he started to work for an immigrant, Ihor Horich, from Ukraine, selling Lennox air conditioners.

Prem Watsa recalls trying to negotiate with his boss for gas money, and how a bigger commission motivated him. "So Ihor put his arms around me and said, ‘Instead of giving you a three per cent commission I’ll give you a five per cent commission.’ Then I started selling. I sold a lot of air conditioners.”

In 1974, he got his Master’s degree and went for a job interview at Confederation Life in Toronto. “You know why I got that job? Because I got a call for a second interview, and the other three didn’t show up.”

Prem Watsa recounted his boss Ihor's blunt style when he told him he was quitting. “I said, ‘Well, you know, I got a job, Ihor.’ And he said, ‘How much are they paying you?’ And I said, ‘$11,000 a year.’“ He said, ‘$11,000? You’re not worth that.’”

In 1985, a little more than 10 years after joining Confederation Life, Prem Watsa and a few other entrepreneurs left to found the company that would eventually morph into Fairfax Financial Holdings.

Watsa helped grow this company to a point where it reached annual revenues of $8 billion but largely remained outside the public eye, and began to hold investor conference calls only as late as 2001. As Fairfax grew, Watsa began acquiring insurance companies, modeling his business after the success of his idol, Warren Buffett. Fairfax Holdings today has a market cap of more than $13 billion, and owns companies in Canada, the U.S. and almost a dozen other countries worldwide with stakes in companies such as GE and Blackberry.

He was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015. In September 2017, he was elected as the first chancellor of Huron University College. Watsa remains an active and contributing member of the community, he is the member of the Board of Trustees of the Hospital for Sick Children, member of Advisory Board for Richard Ivey School of Business, member of Board of Directors of the Royal Ontario Museum Foundation, and Chairman of Investment Committee for the St.Paul’s Anglican Church.