Power Corporation Canada-Communist China Connection

Company History

• Introduction
• The Foundation
  (1925–1950)
• The Transformation
  (1950–1967)
• New Controlling Shareholder
  (1968–1980)
• Restructuring and Expansion
  (1981–1988)
• Europe
  (1990–2000)
• At Home and Abroad
  (1990–1995)
• Management Changes
  (1996–2000)
• Global Challenges
  (2001–2011)
• Power Today

At Home and Abroad

(1990–1995)

Europe wasn’t Power Corporation’s only area of expansion. Great-West Life’s wholly owned subsidiary Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company emerged as a leader in the fields of employee benefits and retirement products in the United States. In Canada, meanwhile, Great-West Life and Investors Group respectively became the largest companies in life and health insurance and mutual fund distribution.

On the other side of the world, Power Corporation worked at solidifying the special, ongoing relationship with....

the government of China 

that had begun in the late 1970s. Power Corporation’s joint venture to buy a pulp mill in British Columbia in 1986 with the Canadian subsidiary of China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC), the international investment arm of the People’s Republic of China, marked CITIC’s largest investment outside China at the time. Though Power Corporation sold its interest in the mill in 1992, it continued to develop investment opportunities with CITIC and other entities in Asia.

Power Pacific Corporation, created for that purpose, opened offices in Hong Kong in 1994 and Beijing in 1998. It soon joined with CITIC in the development of industrial real estate in the special economic zone of Pudong, outside of Shanghai, and participated with Canadian and Chinese partners in the manufacture of passenger rail cars in China. More significantly, Power Corporation acquired an equity interest in CITIC’s publicly traded conglomerate CITIC Pacific Limited, a diversified holding company based in Hong Kong, with interests in power generation, transportation, communications, and real estate.