Now 62, Harper is looking to make his mark in perhaps the biggest way since his near-decade as Canada’s leader
As word circulated late last year that Stephen Harper, Canada’s 22nd Prime Minister, was planning to launch an activist investing fund with a protégé of Wall Street raider Carl Icahn, some eyebrows were raised on Bay Street and in political circles.
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While former prime ministers have not shied away from private sector work after their time at 24 Sussex (if they leave politics at all, that is) in most cases that involvement has come through cushy positions at blue chip law firms, where drumming up business and making introductions at home and abroad has been the order of the day.
The rough-and-tumble world of activist investing, in which outsiders target underperforming companies and take stakes in them while sometimes less-than-gently encouraging a change in direction, would seem to be a deeper and more hands-on venture into the corporate realm than most have attempted.
Harper was, in the best sense of the word, an activist as Prime Minister
Karl Moore, associate professor of strategy and organization at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management
But the prospect of a former prime minister shaking things up in corporate boardrooms may not be as jarring when one considers Harper’s political legacy. Trained as an economist, Harper was instrumental in…