China Investment CEO trying to forge new ties

After a successful financial management career, Felix Chee was set to retire for the third time in 2008. But then he was offered a once-ina-lifetime opportunity to move to Beijing and help run China's new sovereign wealth fund. He accepted the offer but postponed his start date until a month after the birth of his first grandchild.

"I wanted to be here," he said, explaining that he found it difficult to be away from his family.

That changed this year, when Chee was appointed Chief Representative to Canada of the more than $400 billion China Investment Corp.(CIC) fund. These days, he works out of an office in Toronto and he and his wife, Margaret, are able to spend many weekends with their toddler granddaughter.

In an interview Wednesday morning at Montreal's Omni Hotel where he was to address the Quebec business community at a luncheon later in the day, Chee, 64, attempted to dispel what he characterized as popular misconceptions about the fund and China.

"Our No. 1 goal is to make money," he said. "There is no other agenda."

He said the CIC's Canadian office looks for investment strategies that are relevant to China's needs, particularly in the natural resource and energy sectors. The fund also tries to invest in a way that gives the public a positive perception of the CIC - and China, he added.

"We're trying to address the feeling that China is trying to buy up everything," he said, adding that the CIC takes a different approach from some of the other Chinese funds that have invested in Canada.

"We never take a controlling position," Chee said, explaining that the CIC takes significant - but not majority positions in companies.

"We're not participating in hostile takeovers - we're not trying to buy the whole company."

Although the majority of the end products may end up being exported to China, the companies remain in Canada, he said.

Chee took issue with the popular view that Chinese companies are "hollowing out" Canada's corporate sector.

"The U.S. hollowed out the corporate sector a long time ago," he said.

Born and raised in Singapore to Chinese parents, Chee later studied in England and Canada. After moving here in the 1970s, he held various high-level financial management posts at Ontario Hydro, Manulife Financial Group and the University of Toronto.

While advising the CIC in China, Chee was instrumental in leading the fund to invest in mining firm Teck Resources Ltd. and Penn West Petroleum Ltd.

The fund's Canadian office is responsible for looking for opportunities in countries in the Americas.

On Tuesday, Chee met with Quebec officials to discuss the possibility of CIC investing in the province's Plan Nord.

The provincial government has predicted that the initiative will lead to more than $80 billion in investments over a 25-year period and create, on average, 20,000 jobs each year.

Quebec environmental groups, however, are unhappy with what they say is a dearth of measures to ensure land protection in the area that is to be developed.

amacgregor@montrealgazette.com