Lögberg-Heimskringla - 27.04.1990, Blaðsíða 5

Lögberg - Heímskringla • Föstudagur 27. apríl 1990 • 5
An offer he couldn’t refuse
by Kelly Taylor
As Donald Johnson takes the reins
of a huge investment conglomerate,
it’s ironic for the firm believer in capi-
talism to reflect on a high school
friendship with one of Manitoba’s
most noted socialists.
Johnson, the newly appointed presi-
dent of Security Pacific Alliance Ltd.,
spent six years in Winnipeg and while
attending grade 12 at Daniel Macln-
tyre Collegiate struck a close friend-
ship with Howard Pawley.
“He and I used to have great discus-
sions,” Johnson, 55, said in a recent
interview.
“We certainly didn’t always agree,
he being a socialist and me a capital-
ist.”
Pawley, who would later become
Manitoba’s Premier, lived on Inger-
soll Street at the time, just one block
west of Johnson’s Lipton Street home
He laughed when asked about his
friendship with Johnson.
“It would only have been for that
one year but we were quite friendly
then our paths never crossed again,”
said Pawley, who has since returned
to law.
“There’s no question he was a hard
worker and quite conscientious about
his studies.”
Johnson’s work ethic has certainly
paid off. After joining Burns Fry in
1963, he worked his way to the top,
becoming executive vice president in
1982 and president in 1984.
In 1989 he was named a vice chair-
man in the company.
It was not an easy climb for
Johnson.
After growing up in Lundar, he
moved with his mother and younger
brother to Lipton Street in 1951, the
year his father died.
His mother, Fjola, helped support
the two during school, not an easy
task for a single parent earning a
clerk’s wage at Kresge’s.
“She made a great personal sacri-
fice to bring the two of us up,” Johnson
said.
Three years ago, he set up a schol-
Donald Johnson will be commuting between Toronto and New York
as president of Security Pacific Alliance.
arship at Lundar High School in his
mother’s name. She died 10 years ago.
After high school, Johnson studied
engineering at the University of Mani-
toba and in 1957, left Winnipeg for
Toronto to work for Canadian General
Electric.
At CGE, he worked for two months
each in the six major departments of
the company. It was there he decided
to pursue finance, he said.
“I wasn’t totally convinced I was
going to be the world’s greatest engi-
neer,” he laughed.
To bankroll his schooling, he spent
two years working in the Canadian
arctic for Federal Electric as a radar
technician.
After graduating with a master’s
degree in business from the Univer-
sity of Western Ontario in 1963, he
joined Burns Fry as a securities ana-
lyst.
His appointment to the presidency
of Security Pacific Alliance Ltd. was an
opportunity not to be missed, he said.
“They offered me the position the
day before I was to go on a vacation
with my fiancee and we had a good,
long discussion because of the travel
demands.
“She took a very enlightened atti-
tude and said ‘Go for it,’ so I did.”
Since Security Pacific Alliance will
hold a 49 per cent interest in invest-
ment banking operations in Canada,
Europe and Asia, and has its head of-
fice in New York, Johnson says he’ll
spend half his time travelling.
But for the last 15 years, Johnson
has headed up the international divi-
sion of Burns Fry and is no stranger to
travel.
“I’m quite excited about it... and in
this position, I’ll be visiting places I’ve
never had the opportunity to visit in
the past,” he said.
Much of what’s left will be spent in
his Burns Fry office in Toronto, which
he says he will keep despite having an
office and staff in New York.
“The original plan was I was going
to move to New York, but I decided
with modern communications I can
communicate as effectively from
Toronto as from New York.”
He will keep his house in
Toronto.and rent an apartment in New
York, he said.
A factor that helped his decision, he
said, was the ability to take his fiancee
and three children on various busi-
ness junkets.
Security Pacific Alliance is a newly
created subsidiary of Security Pacific
Corp. and was formed to oversee op-
erations of investment banks Burns
Fry in Canada, Hoare Govett Asia and
Hoare Govett in Britain.
Security Pacific holds 49 per cent of
each company, and employees in turn
hold minority interests in Security
Pacific.
“I think it is a totally unique struc-
ture. It has not been done before by
any other bank,” Johnson said.
“This allows the banks to recruit
and keep good people, because they
are essentially autonomous, but also
gives them the backing of a major
world class bank with the 49 per cent
ownership.”
Hoare Govett is a firm much like
Burns Fry, except it concentrates on
institutional customers while Burns
Fry also deals with the public.
Johnson said the structure of the
new company was the result of a task
force struck to find ways to compete in
an increasingly global financial mar-
ket.
“They realized the best type of firm
is a very entrepreneurial firm ... and
this is the structure they came up
with.”
In June, Johnson plans to marry
Anna McCowan, who owns a ballet
school in Toronto and also studied
under Royal Winnipeg Ballet founder
Gwenyth Lloyd in the 1950s.
Security Pacific Corp., which owns
Security Pacific Alliance Ltd., is the
fifth largest bank holding company in
the United States, with assets of $84
billion and offices in 27 countries.
Courtesy of the Winnipeg Free Press
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