Alexandre Taillefer is a Canadian

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

from

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

. He is the founder and managing partner of XPND Capital, a private equity firm.

Commercial activities

In 1993, at age 21, Tallifer founded Intellia, an

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managem ...

service provider later bought by

Quebecor Quebecor Inc. is a Canadian diversified media and telecommunications company serving Québec based in Montreal. It was spelled Quebecor in both English and French until May 2012, when shareholders voted to add the acute accent, Québecor, in F ...

. He worked at Quebecor for five years (until 2000), where he led the online division. He completed a number of mergers, including the merger of Informission with Intellia to create Nurun, now owned by

Publicis Publicis Groupe is a French multinational advertising and public relations company. One of the oldest and largest marketing and communications companies in the world by revenue, it is headquartered in Paris. After 1945, the little-known Paris ...

. In 2007, he co-founded

Stingray Digital Stingray Group Inc. (formerly Stingray Digital and Stingray Digital Group) is a publicly traded Canadian media and entertainment company based in Montreal, Quebec, with offices in the United States, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, ...

, a provider of musical products and services. Taillefer is managing partner of XPND Capital, a private equity firmt hat manages some 40 million dollars across several

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

funds. While the firm initially partnered with Stephen Bronfman and his private equity firm Claridge, all of the capital in latter funds has come from the Quebec government. Taillefer was criticized for sub-par returns in funds which consist solely of public money. In 2015, the firm acquired

Voir ''Voir'' was a francophone alternative weekly newspaper in Montreal, Quebec, published by Communications Voir. ''Voir'' was founded by Pierre Paquet in November 1986. The first issue of the newspaper was published on 27 November 1986. Later on t ...

, a major Quebec publisher. Also in 2015, the firm created Taxelco, a holding company which controls over 40% of the taxi market in Montreal, through controlling investments in Téo Taxi, Taxi Diamond, and Taxi Hochelaga.

Other activities

In 2012, Taillefer became chairman of the board of the

Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MACM) is a contemporary art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located on the Place des festivals in the Quartier des spectacles and is part of the Place des Arts complex. Founded in 1964, it is ...

. From 2013 to 2016, he was a "dragon" on the TV show '' Dans l'œil du dragon, the Quebec version of

Dragon's Den ''Dragons' Den'' is a reality television program format in which entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a panel of venture capitalists in the hope of securing investment finance from them. The program originated in 2001 in Japan, where it is k ...

.'' Taillefer has, from time to time, voiced his political positions. In 2015, he voiced his support for a $15 minimum wage. In May 2017, he encouraged the Quebec government to invest in subsidized childcare.

Political career

Alexandre Taillefer served as the campaign chair for the Quebec Liberal Party in the

2018 Quebec general election The 2018 Quebec general election was held on October 1, 2018, to elect members to the National Assembly of Quebec. The election saw a landslide victory for the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) led by François Legault, which won 74 of 125 seats, ...

. He did not run for a seat in the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the rep ...

. His position as campaign chair for the party in power and as a major shareholder of Quebec media companies generated concerns regarding his potential use of the media to promote the Liberal Party. Similar concerns resulted from the election of Pierre Karl Péladeau as

Parti Québecois Parti may refer to: * Parti (surname), a Hungarian surname, and a list of people with the name * ''Parti'' (architecture), the organizing concepts behind an architect's design * *, a lake in Russia See also * Partie (disambiguation) * Party (disa ...

leader. In an effort to respond to these concerns, Taillefer transitioned out of his managerial responsibilities.

L'actualité ''L'actualité'' is a Canadian French-language news and general interest magazine published in Montreal by Rogers Communications until 2016, then by Mishmash (XPND Capital). The magazine has over a million readers, according to Canada's Print Measu ...

, a Quebec media outlet announced on May 10, 2018, that Taillefer had been a registered lobbyist to seek subsidies for his taxi companies.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Taillefer, Alexandre Living people French Quebecers Canadian mass media owners Quebecor people Businesspeople from Montreal Year of birth missing (living people)