Early Life and Business Career
Emerson attended the University of Alberta and obtained his Bachelor of Economics degree in 1968 and his Master of Economics degree in 1970. He then went on to Queen's University where he received his Ph.D in Economics.
In 1975, after working as a researcher for the Economic Council of Canada, Emerson moved to British Columbia and joined the public service. In 1984, he became Deputy Minister of Finance.
In 1986, Emerson was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the Western & Pacific Bank of Canada. He transformed it into the Western Bank of Canada- the only regional bank to survive and prosper. Four years later, he returned as Deputy Minister of Finance and was quickly promoted to Deputy Minister to the Premier and President of the British Columbia Trade Development Corporation.
From 1992 to 1997, Emerson was President and Chief Executive Officer of the newly created Vancouver International Airport Authority.
In 1998, Emerson was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of Canfor Corporation, a leading integrated forest products company and Canada's largest producer of softwood lumber. With 8,100 workers and annual revenues of $3.2 billion servicing 10% of the U.S. market, Canfor operates pulp and paper mills as well as 19 sawmills across B.C., two in Alberta and one in Quebec. Despite US duties and a higher Canadian dollar, Emerson managed to increase profits and raise share prices through a major acquisition deal and efficiency upgrades, which increased capacity by 30% while reducing production costs by 24%.
In 2008, Emerson joined private equity firm CAI Capital Management as a senior advisor.
Emerson's directorships included: Terasen Inc; Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Company of Canada; Vice-Chairman of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives; Chair, British Columbia Ferry Services Inc.; and Chairman and Director of Genus Resource Management Technologies Inc.
Read more about this topic: David Emerson
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, business and/or career:
“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Actually, if my business was legitimate, I would deduct a substantial percentage for depreciation of my body.
Contemplative and bookish men must of necessitie be more quarrelsome than others, because they contend not about matter of fact, nor can determine their controversies by any certain witnesses, nor judges. But as long as they goe towards peace, that is Truth, it is no matter which way.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)