Frank McKenna will be at next weeks’s inaugural Canada Investment Summit. As deputy chair of TD Securities and chair of Brookfield Corporation, not to mention a former premier of New Brunswick and ambassador to the U.S., he knows something about negotiating big deals. A self-described “interested observer” of the main summit, he helped arrange two of its side events – the Milken Institute’s first-ever Global Dialogues event in Canada and the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association’s Global Growth Forum.
“It’s really the most interesting event that I’ve been part of in decades in Canada. I’ve never seen anything like this. I was just talking to a [cabinet] minister who’s got a bunch of bilateral [meetings] and things going on that I didn’t even know about. This is like a Super Bowl with hundreds of tailgate parties. At Brookfield we’ve got a dinner Tuesday night that’s got more money in the room than I knew was on the planet. I just got asked to host a dinner with the richest guy in Africa, who’s coming here.”
Be Giant: Frank McKenna on the hoopla and FOMO around the first Canada Investment Summit