John MacBain

John H. McCall MacBain (born ) is a Canadian billionaire businessman and philanthropist who is the founder of the McCall MacBain Foundation and Pamoja Capital SA, its investment arm. Prior to establishing the McCall MacBain Foundation, in the late 1980s he bought Auto Hebdo magazine in Quebec City and bought and consolidated several other existing Auto Traders to form Trader Classified Media based on the Auto Trader Magazine concept developed by Stuart Arnold in Florida in 1973.

Education

McCall MacBain received an MBA from Harvard Business School (1984), an MA in Law (Jurisprudence) from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and an Honours BA in Economics from McGill University (1980). He holds honorary degrees from Dalhousie University, the University of Ottawa, Brock University, McGill University and Monash University.

He served as president of the Students' Society of McGill University, as well as valedictorian. While at Oxford, he was co-captain of the university's ice hockey team.

Career

He worked from 1984 to 1987 as director of marketing at Power Corporation.

From 1987 to 2006, McCall MacBain was the founder, president and CEO of Trader Classified Media, the world's leading classified advertising company. Starting with his purchase of three small publications in Montreal in 1987, when he was 29 years old, he developed the classified business to include 500 print titles and 57 internet sites in over 20 countries, including in Argentina, Australia, China, France, Hungary, Italy, Russia and Spain.

After its IPO in 2000, Trader Classified Media was publicly traded on NASDAQ and the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange. In 2006, McCall MacBain sold the company and set up the McCall MacBain Foundation.

He is now chancellor of McGill University for a three-year term from 2021 to 2024.

Philanthropy

Since its formation in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2007, the McCall MacBain Foundation has made tens of millions of dollars of grants to fund projects relating to education and scholarships, health and climate change, and the environment. In addition to his role as a director and chair of the foundation, McCall MacBain is the Founding Chair of the European Climate Foundation, Chair of the McGill University Principal's International Advisory Board, a member of the Advisory Board for the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and a Foundation Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. Additionally, he is a director of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation in Cape Town.

McCall MacBain, a Canadian Rhodes Scholar (Quebec and Wadham, 1980), donated $120 million to the Rhodes Trust in order to help fund the scholarships and aid the expansion of the program to Brazil, China, Japan and Russia. He made that gift in September 2013, during the Rhodes 110th anniversary celebrations. As a result, he was named a 'Second Century Founder of the Rhodes Scholarships' in honour of that significant gift. Additionally, McCall MacBain was honoured in 2014 as a Fellow of the Chancellor's Court of Benefactors at Oxford University and at Rhodes House, where his portrait hangs and a room bears his name. The McCall MacBain Graduate Centre at Wadham College, Oxford, was endowed by him.

McCall MacBain has also donated more than $1.2 million to fund McCall MacBain Loran Scholars through the Loran Scholars Foundation – the largest undergraduate entry scholarship programme in Canada.

On June 30, 2016, McCall MacBain was named an Officer of the Order of Canada by Governor General David Johnston for "his achievements as a business leader and for his contributions to academic institutions as a philanthropist."

On February 13, 2019, John and Marcy McCall MacBain donated $200 million to McGill University, the single-largest gift in its history, for a graduate scholarship program – the McCall MacBain Scholarship – modelled on the Rhodes Scholarship.

In 2019, he also seeded the Kupe Leadership Scholarship at the University of Auckland.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:MacBain, John
Officers of the Order of Canada
McGill University alumni
Harvard Business School alumni
Canadian Rhodes Scholars
Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford
Canadian chief executives
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Rhodes Trustees
1950s births
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