Petty, George S.

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1996
GEORGE S. PETTY
to be Doctor of Laws

For most of the graduates at this Encaenia, today marks the end of what some people call the "paper chase." For George Petty, on the other hand, the paper chase is a life's work. Whether you spell it frontwards or backwards, paper is George Petty's business and his consuming interest.

In case you haven't figured it out, paper spelled backwards is Repap. George Petty is the founder of Repap Enterprises and is today its chairman, chief executive officer, and largest single shareholder. At first, Repap was nothing but an outmoded pulp mill in Temiscaming, Quebec, which he bought with borrowed money. He cobbled together several other like mills and a research centre scattered in such places as Wisconsin, British Columbia, Pennsylvania, and New Brunswick. Then he borrowed heavily to modernize them with the latest and best equipment he could find, transforming several worn-out mills into North America's third-largest producer of coated paper, one of the top 10 such producers in the world. Today, Repap employs over 5,000 people producing the high quality paper that goes into magazines, catalogues, and the glossy annual reports of other big companies.

It has not all been roses. As he himself has said: "I have been accused of a lot of things, but having a good sense of timing isn't one of them." His leveraged buyouts and investment in huge machines like the one at the Newcastle mill were accomplished just in time for the prolonged recession of the early 1990s, when paper prices and demand were plummeting. To save the company and to inject badly needed new capital, he took the company public, and then sold off a large part of his dominant position. "I'd rather own a quarter of something that's really good instead of three-quarters of something that wouldn't have survived," is the way he explains it.
Whether by luck or by foresight, George Petty's Repap has rebounded from the recession into profitability and today stands as a world-class operation. High tech, innovative, aggressive, praised by the Wall Street Journal as one of the success stories of the nineties, Repap is now a $3.4-billion giant, and proof that George Petty is no paper tiger.

There is, of course, a human side to this remarkable entrepreneur. He is a religious man, an admirer and supporter of Rev. Robert Schuller, of television fame. He is a Montrealer, passionately fond of Quebec and of Canada. He was educated in Montreal, has degrees from McGill and served on its Board of Governors, and despite several years spent working in the United States, he returned to make his home in Montreal with his wife and three children. Montreal is, of course, also the corporate headquarters of Repap.

George Petty has been honored on numerous occasions by the paper industry, by business groups and by other universities. Today we at UNB are privileged to honor him for his substantial contribution to the forest industry in New Brunswick; for his creation of hundreds of jobs on the Miramichi in one of the most up-to-date paper-making facilities in the world; for his encouragement and support of forestry, engineering and science graduates of the University of New Brunswick; and for his entrepreneurial brilliance and uncompromising commitment to excellence.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 3