Advertisement 1

Françoise Guénette to receive lifetime achievement honour at 2016 CGCA gala

Françoise Guénette of Intact Financial will receive the Lifetime Achievement honour at the 2016 Canadian General Counsel Awards gala on June 1

Article content

Françoise Guénette, who steps down as the top in-house lawyer at Intact Financial Corp. on May 5, will receive the Lifetime Achievement honour at the 2016 Canadian General Counsel Awards gala in June.

Guénette has served as a general counsel with so many major corporations over her 40-year career that you might describe her as a “GC junkie.” But she’s capped her career with a 19-year run at Intact, where she’s been at the epicentre of some dramatic corporate transformations.

Advertisement 2
Story continues below
Article content

“I’m sad to leave in a way, because I feel that I am at my peak,” she says. “But when you are at the peak, you can only go one direction.”

Article content

Guénette came to Montreal after growing up in the tiny village of Saint-François-d’Assise in Gaspé. She excelled in math and science and considered a career in medicine, but was ultimately drawn to study law at McGill University due to the “human” side of it, she says. “I probably watched too many episodes of Perry Mason. I wanted to save the widows and the orphans. That was my goal.”

She articled with what is now McCarthy Tétrault LLP in Montreal and was called to the Quebec bar in 1977. She excelled at corporate work. “I discovered the bottom line, and I discovered that we can do good, even working for a company.”

Several companies would hire her to work in-house: Gaz Metropolitan Inc., National Bank of Canada, Laurentian General Insurance Co., Provigo Inc. and Bell Canada. In 1997, she was recruited to run the growing legal arm of an insurance company then-known as ING Canada Inc. (The company would rebrand itself as Intact in 2009 after Dutch financial giant ING Groep sold its controlling stake).

Article content
Advertisement 3
Story continues below
Article content

She credits Intact with entrusting her with some big files. She helped develop a new business to provide clients with legal services insurance and she ran the company’s risk management function for four years.

Two other moments stand out from her career. Her legal team conducted an initial public offering in December 2004 that raised nearly $1 billion.

And in 2014 she was part of a team of about 80 individuals, among them not just lawyers but also finance experts, actuaries, HR representatives and operations staffers, who directed Intact’s $2.6-billion purchase of AXA Canada from Paris-based AXA Group. The deal was a complex one, a matrix of 38 separate transactions and four financings that raised $1.9 billion in equity and debt.

“And that transaction has been extremely successful for the company,” she says.

Now 65, she’s handing the legal reins to Frédéric Cotnoir, who last January joined the company from McCarthy Tétrault LLP in Montreal. She’s not leaving the company immediately, though. Guénette will remain as senior vice-president of legal until she officially retires on Dec. 31. “It’s time to give the chance to somebody else,” she says. “I’m ready to go.”

Advertisement 4
Story continues below
Article content

The CGCAs are presented by the National Post and ZSA Legal Recruitment. The 12th annual CGCA gala takes place in Toronto on June 1. Finalists for this year’s other seven awards are now public. 

General Counsel of the Year: Kelly Brown, Chief People, Legal & Corporate Affairs Officer, Molson Coors Canada; Kristine Delkus, Executive Vice-President, Stakeholder Relations and General Counsel, TransCanada; Joseph Frasca, General Counsel and Secretary, Shopify Inc.; Christopher Ginther, Senior Vice President, Legal, Ethics & Compliance, Ontario Power Generation Inc.; Peter Johnson, Executive Vice President & Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer, Shaw Communications Inc.

Business Achievement: Justin Beber, Managing Partner, Brookfield Intrastructure Group; Yves Desjardins-Siciliano, President and Chief Executive Officer, Via Rail Canada; Sebastien Gignac, Senior Vice-President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.; Sheila Murray, President, CI Financial Corp.; Sarah Qadeer, General Counsel, Home Depot of Canada Inc.

Advertisement 5
Story continues below
Article content

Deal Making: Bob Boron, Chief Regulatory Officer, WIND Mobile; Trudy Curran, Former Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, Canadian Oil Sands Ltd.; Janice Odegaard, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Suncor Energy Inc.; Loreto Grimaldi, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, Progressive Waste Solutions Ltd.; Hugh Kerr, Vice-President and Associate General Counsel, Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada; Jim Nikopoulos, SVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, Element Financial Corp.

Litigation Management:  Lilac Bosma, Deputy General Counsel, HSBC Bank Canada; Christina Cuthbert, Assistant General Counsel and Secretary, General Motors of Canada Co.; Elizabeth DelBianco, Chief Legal and Administrative Officer, Celestica Inc.; Jacquie Famulak, Regional Counsel, Canada, Apple Canada Inc.; Marlo Kravetsky, Senior Counsel, Legal Department, TD Bank Group; Marie-France Nantel, Vice-President and General Counsel, Tarkett Sports

Mid-Market Excellence: Sivan Fox, Vice-President, Legal, Dundee Corp.; Steven Kresak, General Counsel, IBI Group; Diane Rodgers, Vice-President and General Counsel, AIG Insurance Company of Canada; Nathalie Rolland, Legal Director and Corporate Secretary, Davids Tea; Jennifer Suess, Head of Legal and Compliance, Alcon Canada Inc.; Lori Sullivan, Senior Vice-President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.

Tomorrow’s Leader: Farrah Carrim, Senior Legal Counsel, Vale Canada Ltd.; John Kain, General Counsel, US Steel Canada; Jennifer Lee, Vice-President, Risk Management, TD Bank Group; Shaun Miller, Chief Counsel, Aon Canada; Kate Ryder, Senior Legal Counsel, Cenovus Energy Inc.; Aida Shahbazi, Canadian Regulatory Liaison, BMO Financial Group

Social Responsibility: Aon Canada Inc.; Barrick Gold Corp.; Bombardier Inc.

Financial Post

dhasselback@nationalpost.com

twitter.com/vonhasselbach

Article content
Comments
You must be logged in to join the discussion or read more comments.
Join the Conversation

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.

This Week in Flyers