Private Sector
A year after leaving the Council, he founded RockCliffe Research and Technology Inc., a firm which introduced public-private partnerships into government laboratories. From 1995 to 2002, he was chair of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.
In 1994, Smith proposed the creation of a private-sector water company in the City of Hamilton. His stated goal was to develop an industry in the city which would be able to develop contracts on a global level. The city managers agreed to his plan, but insisted that Philip Services oversee the project. Smith consented, and was named as the founding president of the Philip Utilities Management Corporation (PUMC). The company eventually was able to reduce by half the workforce from the city's former public utility, and was once blamed by the union for a sewage overflow.
The company successfully broke into the American market in Seattle in 1996. Smith left soon afterwards. PUMC itself was then sold on the basis of an evaluation of approximately $150 million, while the parent company collapsed when it acknowledged that it had significantly overstated earnings from its copper-trading business. Philip Services stock options became worthless; as these were a significant portion of Smith's remuneration, he failed to receive much benefit from the financial success of his company, PUMC. "If anybody is bitter about the Philip experience, I am", he was later quoted as saying.
More recently, Smith has served as chairman of Ensyn Technologies Inc. and as chair of the board for Humber College in Toronto.
In 2012, Smith was appointed commissioner of the Intercounty Baseball League, a semi-pro baseball league in Ontario. He continues to hold this position.
Read more about this topic: Stuart Lyon Smith
Famous quotes containing the word private:
“Hence, the less government we have, the better,—the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation.”
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