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The real (and shocking) story of Kevin O'Leary's business career

Published: 28 January 2016

Buried in the back pages of the financial press last October was a story about the sale of his mutual fund company, O’Leary Funds, to Canoe Financial, an investment firm run by former Dragons’ Den cast member and entrepreneur Brett Wilson.

...Henry Mintzberg, the Cleghorn professor of management studies at 69Ƶ, believes O’Leary’s depiction of a business leader is pejorative. “Pitbull (executives) don’t add anything at all,” he said in an interview with this reporter back in 2012. Mintzberg said in the US there’s been the emergence of the “cult of heroic leadership” within corporations. “The tendency there… is to attribute any success of the company to one person,” he remarked. But Mintzberg said companies function best when CEO’s recognize that companies are collaborative efforts and they show flexibility and emotional health. O’Leary, on the other hand, “is obviously an arch narcissist,” noted Mintzberg. “I don’t know how he manages his companies, but his stereotype is dysfunctional.”

Read full article:, 26 January, 2016

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