Anthony Lacavera | |
|---|---|
_Annual_BBQ_(6140609689).jpg) Lacavera at the Canadian Film Centre (CFC), 2011 | |
| Born | 1974 (age 49–50)[1] |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Alma mater | University of Toronto (1997) |
| Occupation(s) | Businessman, venture capitalist, television host |
| Years active | 1998 - present |
| Known for | Globalive (founder, chairman) Wind Mobile (founder) |
| Notable work | Beyond Innovation |
Anthony Lacavera is a Canadian businessman, venture capitalist, television host, and philanthropist. He is founder, chairman, and former CEO of Globalive, a Toronto-based telecommunications and investment company. He has also founded several other companies including Wind Mobile, a wireless service provider which was sold to Shaw Communications in 2016 for $1.6 billion.
He also started a media company, Globalive Media, which produces the television series Beyond Innovation that airs on Bloomberg TV globally. He has produced Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 2008 which received Laurence Olivier Award for Best Revival in 2010. He has also produced A Streetcar Named Desire for Broadway.
Lacavera was born in 1974 in Welland, Ontario. His father was a lawyer and a high school teacher.[2] His sister Catherine is also a businesswoman and was among the list of Fortune's 40 Under 40 in 2013.[3]
He went to Notre Dame College School in Welland,[4] and Neuchâtel Junior College in Neuchâtel, Switzerland until 1993.[5][6] He went to University of Toronto and joined Applied Science and Engineering school and graduated in computer engineering in 1997.[7] In 2012, he has also received an honorary diploma in "Business and Entrepreneurship" from the Niagara College.[8]
He played Junior "B" ice hockey leagues in Welland and Thorold.[4]
After graduation, Lacavera founded Globalive in 1998 with a $25,000 small business loan from the Royal Bank of Canada. Globalive is a telecommunications and investment company based in Toronto, Ontario.[2]
The first operating company was Canopco, a communication company in the hospitality industry, supplying hotels and hospitals with a variety of services.[9] In 1999, he founded InterClear, a billing and collection service and then in 2000, Assemble Conferencing. These are three companies were merged into each other and started calling Globalive Communications, which was later converted into Globalive.[10]
In 2001, he co-founded Enunciate Conferencing with two partners, which was sold to Premiere Global Services for USD $28.3 million in 2006.[10][2] In 2003, he founded OneConnect Services through his Globalive, to provide communications technologies to small and medium sized businesses.[11]
Lacavera through his Globalive acquired Yak Communications for all-cash USD $67.7 million in 2006, a communications company founded in 1991 by Charles Zwebner.[12][13]
In 2008, Globalive founded WIND Mobile, a wireless telecommunications provider, and Lacavera became the Founder CEO of the company.[14] He also founded an investment firm, Globalive Capital Inc.[15] In 2015, Lacavera stepped down as a CEO of Globalive Capital and appointed its previously chief financial officer, Brice Scheschuk as the new CEO.[16]
He also started an augmented reality solutions company, a joint venture between Globalive and Gibraltar Ventures's XMG Studios, called Globalive XMG.[17] Globalive XMG was later sold to the Los Angeles-based Civic Resource Group's CivicConnect.[18]
Anthony closed a deal of $1.6 billion to sell WIND Mobile to Shaw Communications in March 2016, which Shaw renamed it to Freedom Mobile.[19][20] The same year in September, Lacavera also sold his other three companies including the Yak Communications to Distributel, OneConnect Services and Canopco to Accelerated Connections Inc (ACI).[21]
In March 2022, Lacavera showed an interest to reacquire Freedom/Wind from Shaw in a pending merger with Rogers Communications for C$3.75 billion to satisfy regulatory concerns.[22][23] After an unresponsive behavior from Rogers, Lacavera's Globalive directly went to Shaw making the same offer to buy the company.[24]
In 2008, Lacavera co-produced the all-African-American Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, starring James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, and Terrence Howard.[25] The production, with some roles recast, had a limited run (2009 – April 2010) in London's West End Productions. It received Laurence Olivier Award for Best Revival in 2010.[26]
He has also co-produced Broadway's A Streetcar Named Desire in 2012, another play by Williams. It was directed by Emily Mann, starring Blair Underwood, Nicole Ari Parker, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Wood Harris.[27]
He started a media company, Globalive Media, with journalist Michael Bancroft, produced and premiered its first television series, Beyond Innovation, a weekly technology and business related program, aired in November 2018 on Bloomberg TV globally.[28] In March 2020, the second season of the half-hourly series premiered on Bloomberg.[29]
In 2012, Lacavera started "Lacavera Prize" in partnership with The Entrepreneurship Hatchery at the University of Toronto, to help university students looking to start an entrepreneurial venture.[30][31] Kepler Communications is one of successful telecommunications companies which won the prize and founded in 2015 by the University's four graduate students.[32]
He is director and co-chair of NEXT Canada, a non-profit organization.[33] He is also a founding partner of the Creative Destruction Lab, a nonprofit organization,[34] with five locations at different educational institutes in Canada and the United States.[35]