George A. Cope CM (born 28 July 1961) is a Canadian businessman, and the former CEO of Bell Canada.
Cope was born in Scarborough, Ontario and grew up in Port Perry. [1] Cope's father played for a short time for the Toronto Argonauts, after which he ran gas stations and rustproofing shops. Cope's mother ran a store that sold fabrics. [1] Cope attended Port Perry High School [1] and played on the high school's basketball team and was also student council president. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with honours in 1984 from the Ivey Business School at Western University. [2]
Cope was named CEO of Bell[ citation needed ] at the age of 53 as part of a proposed thirty five billion dollar leveraged buyout led by Providence Equity and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Fund in 2008. [3] Due to the credit crunch and the ensuing financial crisis of 2007–08, however, the buyout was cancelled. He led a competitor, Telus Mobility, before becoming President at Bell in 2005. He previously ran Clearnet, a wireless company that was bought by Telus in 2000. [3]
In 2010, Cope led the launch of the Bell Let's Talk Initiative, [4] a major corporate campaign to improve mental health in Canada, for which he received The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal.
In June 2019, BCE announced Cope will retire in January 2020, at which point COO Mirko Bibic will become CEO. [5] Over the past 10 years, under Cope's leadership, company profits tripled to $3.05 billion. [6]
Cope sits on the board of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) and was instrumental in the firing of Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke after BCE acquired MLSE. [7] As of 2015, Cope is also a member of the Richard Ivey School of Business Advisory Board at Western University and a member of the Business Council of Canada. [2]
Cope was named Canada's Outstanding CEO of the Year in 2015. He was also listed as one of Canada's top-paid CEO's by The Globe and Mail in 2014. [8]
The Toronto Maple Leafs are a professional ice hockey team based in Toronto. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Division in the Eastern Conference. The club is owned by Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, a company that owns several professional sports teams in the city. The Maple Leafs' broadcasting rights are split between BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications. For their first 14 seasons, the club played their home games at the Mutual Street Arena, before moving to Maple Leaf Gardens in 1931. The Maple Leafs moved to their present home, Scotiabank Arena, in February 1999.
Bell Canada is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is an ILEC in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec; as such, it was a founding member of the Stentor Alliance. It is also a CLEC for enterprise customers in the western provinces.
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BCE Inc., an abbreviation of its full name Bell Canada Enterprises Inc., is a publicly traded Canadian holding company for Bell Canada, which includes telecommunications providers and various mass media assets under its subsidiary Bell Media Inc. Founded through a corporate reorganization in 1983, when Bell Canada, Northern Telecom, and other related companies all became subsidiaries of Bell Canada Enterprises Inc., it is one of Canada's largest corporations. The company is headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the Verdun borough of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
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