Each year, Caldwell Partners International chooses 40 Canadians who were under 40 in the past year to honour for their outstanding achievements. Click here to learn more about the program, and find more winners in the list below.
Andrew Smith hit New York post-law school and worked in mergers and acquisitions for law firm Sullivan & Cromwell through the heady days of the dot-com boom. As the boom came to an end, he moved over to investment banking with Merrill Lynch. But things really got exciting when he returned home to Canada a couple of years later to work for venerable telecommunications company Bell Canada.
“Bell was returning to its core and I had the opportunity to work on its transition,” says Mr. Smith, who is senior vice-president of corporate strategy and mergers & acquisitions for BCE and Bell Canada.
Beginning with the company’s sale of Telesat in 2006, Mr. Smith managed several major structural changes. It was his team that identified the need for an expanded retail channel and figured out that buying The Source out of creditor protection would give the company a larger wireless retail chain. They also saw the potential in youth-focused Virgin Mobile to complement Solo and Bell Mobility in the company’s mobile phone portfolio. Under his leadership, the company also bought a stake in the Montreal Canadiens hockey team in 2009, bought up big blocks of communications spectrum, and acquired media company CTV, and information technology companies Hypertec and xwave.
The decisions to invest in spectrum and CTV were important ones. They give Bell access to both content and enhanced broadband networks that are key planks in the corporation’s strategy.
A big part of Mr. Smith’s job is building on the talent throughout the company.
“One of the things I pride myself on is that if anyone tells me something, it stays with me,” he says. “If you don’t have people’s trust, you can’t get the info.”
By talking to people on the front lines throughout the company, Mr. Smith is able to identify things that should be done differently and new opportunities to strengthen and build the business. His team’s approach, he says, is to identify talented people with good ideas and work with them to bring their ideas to the board room.
It’s an approach that appears to be paying dividends. BCE stock took a hit after a privatization bid ended abruptly in 2008, but with its aggressive repositioning, has delivered high total shareholder returns.
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