Background
Sirois, Charles was born on May 22, 1954 in Chicoutimi, Quebec, Canada.
Sirois, Charles was born on May 22, 1954 in Chicoutimi, Quebec, Canada.
Doctorate (honorary), University Québec, Montréal, 1996; Doctorate (honorary), University Ottawa (Canada), 0997.
Born in Chicoutimi, Quebec, he earned a Bachelor"s degree in Finance from Université de Sherbrooke and a Master"s degree in Finance from Université Laval. Charles Sirois has experienced significant success in his business career. He is currently a director of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Cossette Communication Group and Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal.
He led Bachelor of Civil Engineering Mobile Communications from 1988 to 1990 as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Subsequently, he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Teleglobe, the leading provider of international long distance and broadband services in Canada.
He also served as Chairman of Telesystem International Wireless, and founded and was Chairman of Microcell Telecommunications, a Group Special Mobile cellular provider in Canada best known for its Fido brand name. Sirois is probably best known within investment circles for his disastrous purchase of United States. based Excel Communications in 1998.
Excel, which was a reseller of residential long distance services, relied on door-to-door sales and so-called multi-level marketing. While Sirois was able to sell Teleglobe to Bell Canada in 2000 at a handsome price of $6.5 billion, the subsequent bursting of the internet bubble and telecom bust forced Teleglobe into bankruptcy in 2002 and the writedown of $2.1 billion of Excel.
In February 2009, Sirois became the Chair of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Sirois had a Netto worth of $1.2 billion CDN in 2015.
(Book by Sirois, Charles, Forget, Claude E.)
In 2011, he cofounded (with François Legault) a social and economic liberal centre-right political party, Coalition Avenir Québec.
He was also a member of the G8 Dot Force, of the National Broadband Task Force, and was a founding member of the Washington-based Global Information Infrastructure Commission (GIIC).
Children: Françoise-Charles, Marie-Hélène.