Peter Mitham

It seems a lot of schools are eager to deliver graduate business degrees in B.C., as a glance at applications listed on the website of the Ministry of Advanced Education indicates: Fairleigh Dickinson University of New Jersey, New York Institute of Technology and, closer to home, Queen’s University. But institutions...

The departure of a business owner can create significant challenges for the leadership of any company. When the company is a family enterprise, succession can become a full-blown crisis involving a clash of personalities. Judi Cunningham, executive director of the Business Families Centre at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, explains that when...

Tapping the barometer is an old trick when you’re trying to figure out which way the weather’s heading. It may not have moved for hours, despite the forecast of an impending storm, but that simple tap may disclose a hint of what’s to come. So it is with this year’s...

The economic recovery may be developing momentum across North America, but it’s hardly evident in the marginal growth of revenues among B.C.’s top companies. In response, B.C. companies in search of growth opportunities have gone shopping. The past year saw expansion-minded purchases by companies ranging from top-listed Telus Corp., which boosted...

A generation ago, in 1982, the launch of QLT Inc. under UBC cancer researcher Julia Levy ushered in the future of B.C.’s biotech industry. Levy was 48 years old at the time and virtually alone in a B.C. business landscape dominated by forestry heavyweights, mining hopefuls and merchant families with...

Vancouver has been a hotbed for mining startups for decades, but the proliferation of companies in the past decade that has made mining the largest single sector among B.C.’s Top 100 companies has its downside, too. Speaking to BCBusiness at this time last year, Oxygen Capital Corp. founder Mark O’Dea warned...

Wine lovers rejoiced at the passage of Bill C-311 in June last year, which promised the free movement of wine across provincial borders. However, the jubilation was short-lived. In the cold light of sober reflection it turned out that all the feds had done was devolve responsibility to the provinces...

Soft-spoken and respectful, Ted Pickell has overseen some of the most aggressive and ambitious construction projects in B.C. Pickell’s father, Bill, launched Pickell Construction Ltd. in Fort St. John in 1953, when Pickell was 12. He always wanted to be...

The story of Coquitlam-based NII Northern International Inc. is really that of a light going on. Company principals Steven Gula and John Bacher hadn’t yet settled on a career when Bacher’s father, Norman Bacher, owner of Hardcraft, an importer and...

Can B.C. become a global centre for human drug trials? Until recently, the province was Canada’s leader in trial activity, but its share of the action has slipped significantly. A new network hopes to lure the lucrative business back to the province.

China softens the blow, but forestry awaits the return of the U.S. market. (Return to B.C.'s Top 100 of 2012.) The numbers paint a grim picture: since 2007, the aggregate revenues for B.C.’s top 10 forest and forest-product firms have dropped from $14.7 billion to $13 billion. Once the province’s biggest industry, the forest sector now accounts for a dwindling share of economic activity.

Chinese investors and entrepreneurs have long considered B.C. a favourite destination, with waves of capital lapping Canada’s Pacific Coast since the late 1800s. Today, with B.C. keen to develop overseas markets for its resources, and China eager to secure raw...