With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1081341
I N V E S T I NG Manica Gautam DIRECTOR, INVESTMENTS, JH INVESTMENTS When the U.S. government bailed out Citigroup in late 2008, Manica Gautam was working in its London o•ce as an associate with the global consumer and retail invest- ment banking division. "I was probably for- tunate to be cheap enough not to lay o€," the casually dressed Gautam jokes at the smart downtown Vancouver headquarters of JH Investments, the private holding and investment company of the Houssian fam- ily. Citigroup's near-collapse turned out be a blessing for Gautam, who gained respon- sibilities when the ‰rm cut most of its mid- level investment bankers. Today at JH, she heads the private investment and venture capital portfolio of Joey Houssian, son of Intrawest Corp. founder Joe Houssian. Gautam's other current gig is overseeing the wind-down of venture capital fund Camp‰re Capital, where she's a partner with John Currie and Christine Day, former CFO and CEO, respectively, of Lululemon Athletica. The Toronto native moved to Vancouver in 2014 to launch Camp•ire and lead its US$32-million raise. The Houssian family B . C .' S MO S T I N F LU E N T I A L WOM E N stages, hear some of their stories and show how big an impact they're making as a group. This time around, we've divided the list into six categories, mindful that some of them overlap. In the •inancial sector and elsewhere, research suggests that female leaders make a business more successful. In a 2016 global survey of almost 22,000 companies, the Washington, D.C.–based Peterson Institute for International Economics found that nearly 60 percent had no female directors and fewer than 5 percent had a female CEO. However, among pro•itable companies surveyed, those with 30-percent female leadership in the C-suite could expect their net margin to be 1 percentage point higher than the others—a 15-percent pro‰t gain. Also in 2016, in a study of male and female Finnish traders from 1995 to 2011, women averaged an impres- sive 21.4-percent annual internal rate of return across the 28 stocks tracked. On average, the researchers found, they bought shares for less and sold them for more than their male peers. For her part, Li co-authored a 2014 study of acquisition bids by S&P 1500 companies from 1997 to 2009, showing that for each additional female director, the price a ‰rm paid for its takeover target fell by 15.4 percent. Asked what can be done to get more women interested in ‰nance, she points to Wall Street banks' move to limit the number of hours worked, including a ban on weekend toil. Fostering a workplace culture that welcomes gender and racial diversity is important, too, says Li, who is also UBC Sauder's senior associate dean, equity and diversity. T wo more key pieces: mentorship and role models. "I understand they do not have enough senior women in that industry, but senior males can also be mentors," Li says. "But they also have to overcome the backlash of the #MeToo events." MARCH 2019 BCBUSINESS 31