Sun Life Financial
| File:Sun Life Financial logo.svg | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Financial Services |
| Founded | 1865 in Montreal |
| Headquarters | Toronto, ON |
Key people | Donald A. Stewart, CEO Dean Connor, President (Canada) Robert C. Salipante, President (U.S.) Stephan Rajotte, President (Asia) |
| Products | Financial Services Insurance Services |
| Revenue |  $21.2 billion Cdn (2007) |
Number of employees | 14,700 |
| Website | www.sunlife.com |
Sun Life Financial Inc. (TSX: SLF, NYSE: SLF, PSE: SLF) is a leading financial services organization in Canada known primarily as a life insurance company. Sun Life ranks number 187 on the Forbes Global 2000 list (2008 edition).
History
Pre-World War War II
Founded in Montreal, Quebec as The Sun Insurance Company of Montreal in 1865 by Mathew Hamilton Gault, an Irish immigrant who settled in Montreal in 1842, its operations actually began in 1871. By the end of the nineteenth century it had expanded to Central and South America, the West Indies, Japan, China, India, North Africa and other international markets. Over the next five decades the company grew and prospered, surviving the difficulties of World War I and the large drain on its finances through policy claims arising from the large number of deaths caused by the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918.
The company's original Dominion Square building in Montreal was built in 1918. Capping a Montreal construction boom that began in the 1920s, the company completed construction of the expansion of its headquarters with its new 26-storey headquarters north tower. Although the new head office of the Royal Bank of Canada at 360 St. James Street in Montreal was taller by several floors, the Sun Life Building was at the time the largest building in terms of square footage anywhere in the British Empire.
World War II
Following the outbreak of World War II in Europe, during the summer of 1940 the Government of the United Kingdom organized highly secret shipments of bonds and stocks to Montreal that were stored in the vaults at Sun Life. It is rumoured that the British crown jewels were also stored in Sun Life's Montreal vaults for the duration of the war. The securities were used to help finance the War. At the time, Gustave Biéler, a French-born Canadian who was fluent in the French and English languages, was working as Chief Translator at Sun Life's head office. He joined the Canadian Army and was shipped overseas where, as part of the Special Operations Executive, he worked inside occupied France until being captured by the Gestapo and executed at Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria.
Post-World War II
During the post-war period, the company's successful business strategies made it one of Montreal's largest white-collar employers, one of the top corporations in Canada, as well as a global player in the life insurance field. For the first half of the 20th century, the city of Montreal had been the economic hub of Canada, but it was losing ground to Toronto. As early as 1950, Toronto's economic activity surpassed Montreal's with regards to stock market trading and capitalization. The advent, in the 1960s, of political and terrorist movements demanding Quebec independence from Canada cast a pallor of uncertainty over the business community. In 1973, Sun Life opened its American subsidiary's new headquarters in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts at the outskirts of Boston. In 1977, the newly elected sovereigntist Quebec government passed the Charter of the French Language (known as Bill 101), making the use of French language mandatory for medium- and large-scale companies when communicating with French-speaking staff. This law was received negatively by the English-speaking business community, many of whom perceived that the historical rights of the English-speaking minority should be respected. On January 6, 1978, the company scaled down the Montreal facilities to serve as a branch service bureau while shifting its head office to rented space in Toronto, Ontario.(1) Officially, Sun Life said it was motivated by the political instability and economic uncertainty of Quebec's future, but skeptics said it was the company's unwillingness to comply with the requirements of Bill 101. In 1979 the company acquired a property at University Avenue and King Street in downtown Toronto and constructed a major ultra-modern office complex called Sun Life Centre.
(1)The above gives a very skewed, even inaccurate view of what actually happened at Sun Life in Montreal with regard to Bill 101. Prior to the Bill's passing, Sun Life presented the PQ government with a brief clearly stating that if Bill 101 became law, Sun Life would be forced to move its Head Office out of the province. All Montreal employees of Sun Life received copies of this brief.
Bill 101 required more than French communications with French-speaking staff. It made French the official language of the workplace. It required all written internal correspondence of a corporation to be conducted in French. It also provided that present and prospective employees who could not speak English not be discriminated against because of their inability to speak English.
For the largest employer of English-speaking people in Montreal, this would make things very difficult. Many, if not most, of Sun Life's Head Office employees in 1979 could not speak French fluently. Following Bill 101 was just not feasible. Sun Life was quite clear that this was the reason for their move when they made the announcement. The PQ government was quick to label Sun Life "bad corporate citizens" and claimed that if "they had only warned us, we could have worked something out."
Sun Life had warned them. The PQ government had ignored the brief which Sun Life had submitted to them months before the Bill was pass into law.
The downsizing of Sun Life's Montreal office did not take place overnight. Transfers and moves were made on a per department basis and did not commence until several months after the announcement of the move.
The transfer of Sun Life's Head Office from Montreal to Toronto is viewed by many to be the start of an exodus of corporate entities from Montreal, but Sun Life was not the first company to leave. Many companies had left long before Sun Life did, only on a much quieter, private basis.
The company today
Today, Sun Life lists its shares on the Toronto, New York, and Philippines stock exchanges. It is one of Standard & Poor's Global 1200 companies.
In 2002, Sun Life acquired Clarica Life Insurance Company of Waterloo, Ontario. After this acquisition, the head office for Sun Life Financial Canada moved to Waterloo while the coproate headequarters remained in Toronto. It still maintains Canadian satellite offices in Montreal and Ottawa. After the acquisition, the Clarica name was still used to brand the products originally owned and sold by Clarica. In June 2007, the Clarica brand was retired.
In 2006 Sun Life India Service Centre Private Limited was incorporated. This centre provides both business processing and technology support for Sun Life Financial business units that are spread all over the world.
In 2007, Sun Life was named one of the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations for the fourth year in a row. It was also named one of the 50 Best Corporate Citizens in Canada as well as one of Canada's Top 100 Employers, as published in Maclean's magazine, and was the sole insurance company to receive this latter honour.[1]
Today, the company manages assets in excess of Cdn $425 billion and has more than 14,700 employees plus thousands of independent agents worldwide.
Corporate governance
Current members of the board of directors of Sun Life Financial are: James Baillie, George Carmany, John Clappison, David Ganong, Germaine Gibara, Krystyna Hoeg, David Kerr, Idalene Kesner, Mitchell Martin, Bertin Nadeau, Ronald Osborne, Donald Stewart, and W. Vickery Stoughton.
References
External links
- Sun Life Financial website
- Sun Life Financial Canada website
- CBC reports on Sun Life leaving Montreal in 1978