James Dai
jamesdai@gmail.com
720 - 320 Granville Street
Vancouver BC V6B 0G5
I am the managing director running a Vancouver-based family office with a decade-long tenure of seeing through entire investment cycles across multiple industries. Our current investments are in mining, oil & gas, forestry, biotechnology and real estate with particular experience in distressed debt and insolvency litigation.
I earned degrees from UBC and MIT, will attend the Stanford Executive Program and hold the CFA, CPA and ICD.D designations and have been a member of the Board of Directors of four public companies. Oh, I was also a professional theatre actor. In 2016, I wrote a memoir about my journey from child immigrant to landed gentry in the first three decades of my life. Now, I am reflecting on my misadventures in business, highlights include:
- Investing $30m in a public biotech company to take it private and selling the psoriasis patents to GSK for $210m and collecting milestone payments over 10+ years. Forgot to restrict assignment so GSK flipped it for another £250m to Softbank/Roivant-backed Dermavant which commercialized the drug globally into a $30b market. Spent 10 years to beat back the CRA's attempt in Tax Court to reclassify the $210m from capital gains as business income. Spent another 5 years to beat back former execs' attempts to claim a 3% success fee.
- Investing $8m in the distressed debt of a mining company only to have the Yukon Government appoint a Receiver who tried to appropriate our collateral with the help of a Yukon Judge. Spent $2m in legal fees to right the wrong at the Court of Appeal of Yukon and getting our collateral back when the Supreme Court of Canada declined to take up the case. Sold the collateral to RCF-backed NorZinc and others for $13m while retaining the rolling stock. Moved the construction equipment 3,000 kms to our nickel mine in Manitoba and the underground mining fleet 2,500 kms to Vancouver to be leased to public mining companies.
- Uncovering a ~$10m management fraud at our Oil & Gas company, taking over and running the company for seven years while fending off multiple creditor claims. Accruing ~$40m in liabilities then seeking bankruptcy protection followed by bankruptcy and conducting a successful sale to shield the directors from environmental liability. Then vending the fraud claim against the former execs out of the bankrupt estate to try to bring the case to trial and claw back the ~$10m.
Apart from harvesting our existing stakes, I am learning and valuing investment opportunities.
James in Vancouver, Canada