In the News Detail
news headline
The Three Faces of Yves
SOURCE
The American Lawyer
AUTHOR
Michael P. Goldhaber
DATE
August 9, 2007
Ogilvy Renault Chair Yves Fortier, who led Alcan's board in its merger with Rio Tinto and is one of the most active arbitrators in the world, was interviewed for the August issue of The American Lawyer.
The feature story in the magazine's Canada Report discussed Mr. Fortier's involvement with several boards he has chaired in his career, including Alcan and Hudson's Bay Company, two of Canada's most valuable companies. It also highlights his impressive record as an international arbitrator and his appointment as Canada's representative to the UN by former prime minister and current Ogilvy Renault senior partner, The Honourable Brian Mulroney.
Also featured in the article are firm co-chair Norm Steinberg and managing partner Pierre Bienvenu.
Excerpt
By The American Lawyer's count, he is the most active high-stakes arbitrator in the world. Then there are [Yves] Fortier's law firm duties. Since 1992 he has chaired Montreal's most venerable law firm, Ogilvy Renault.
It's a career hat trick worthy of hockey great Wayne Gretzky. "Fortier has had one of the most successful careers of his generation in Canada," raves Brian Mulroney, the former prime minister who is an Ogilvy senior partner and Fortier's longtime friend. "Yves," says Ogilvy managing partner Pierre Bienvenu, "exemplifies the maxim 'If you want something done, ask the busiest person.'"
He has a reputation for a down-to-earth manner that's borne out when he walks into his interview with The American Lawyer and unfussily helps unscrew the top of a tea jug that had baffled his interviewer and colleagues. Fortier's air of even-tempered humility, combined with formidable experience and intellect, helps explain his success as an arbitrator-and as Canada's ultimate joiner. "He cuts to the heart of the problem," says former International Court of Justice judge Stephen Schwebel, "but in a manner that is not cutting."
Much of Fortier's good fortune derives from his friendship with Mulroney, who has been a lawyer at Ogilvy for most of his life outside politics. Fortier, a 1960 Rhodes Scholar, was already a star associate when Mulroney first joined Ogilvy upon law school graduation in 1964. Before long, Mulroney was cramming for the bar at Fortier's father-in-law's cottage in the Laurentian Mountains outside Montreal. The two young men and their families would spend weekends playing tennis, swimming, and talking Canadian politics. Or, rather, debating politics, with Mulroney taking the Conservative position and Fortier the center-left Liberal line. Both young lawyers combined rhetorical flair with driving ambition, and they joined every organization in sight, starting with their respective ideological parties. Political dabbling could hardly be discouraged at a firm founded by three Tory politicians in 1879, especially when one of them, Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau, was elected premier of Quebec that same year.
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