GRAND METROPOLITAN - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• SEGA Chairman

Vin Lee was born December 13, 1969 in North York, Ontario. He moved to the United States in 1970, but would return to Canada to study fine art and animation at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario in 1987, passing on his acceptance to Walt Disney's California Institute of Arts in 1986. In the mid 1980s, Time Warner was expanding its cable footprint throughout the United States. In order to woo subscribers and influence community leaders, it helped create curriculum and facilities in local high schools. A studio was built on campus including cameras, sets, and a designated channel to broadcast sporting events, concerts, and student projects. In his early teens, Vin Lee created computer graphics on a Commodore Amiga 1000 for the public access cable channel. This helped earn him, through a grant from the Michigan Education Association, the opportunity to tutor under a Hanna Barbera director from 1985-1987. During this time he produced a three minute hand drawn animated film that was used as a treatment for a pilot for a Saturday morning cartoon. In 1987, he was invited to use his commercial design and graphics background to create marketing merchandise for retailers during the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. Experiencing a bit of hubris he would go on to create a one panel comic strip that was submitted to dozens of comic strip syndicates including Hearst Corporation's King Features Syndicate, E.W. Scripps' United Feature Syndicate, and Washington Post Writers Group. Consistently met with rejection, he attempted to create a family of characters for an animation series, partnering with a group of grocery chains for their breakfast cereals, and PBS. After a chance conversation with SEGA chairman David Rosen, Vin Lee was encouraged to return to his roots of computer graphics and animation. Commodore International's founder Jack Tramiel had purchased legendary video game company Atari Inc. from Steve Ross' Warner Communications. Renamed the Atari Corporation, the company was developing a new lineup of games based on the unreleased Atari Lynx and Jaguar platforms. Through a Vice President of Time Warner, Vin Lee was introduced to Mr. Tramiel and his team. Lee proposed development of an introductory game based on a cartoon jaguar mascot character he had created. The 2D scroller would introduce the new platform, complimentary with purchase of the game console similar to that of Nintendo's Mario Brothers and SEGA's Sonic the Hedgehog characters. The Atari Jaguar was lauded as the first 64-bit gaming system, so Lee proposed "Byte Me!" as the slogan for the edgy new campaign. Management rebuffed the entire program citing the slogan was offensive. The Jaguar was introduced in 1993 under a $500 million manufacturing deal with IBM. Atari struggled to attain a substantial user base ultimately disappearing from store shelves.

Job Titles:

• Billionaire Real Estate Developer

Job Titles:

• CEO
• Chairman of the Board
• Managing Director

Mr. Vin Lee, managing director and CEO, earned patents for mechanical billboards created for H. Wayne Huizenga's Blockbuster Video that have participated in becoming a $6 billion industry worldwide with installations including the Walt Disney Company, Sumner Redstone's Viacom, and the Durwood family's AMC Theatres. Today, Grand Metropolitan manages a portfolio of 100 luxury brands, estimated $7 billion AUM. A brief formal education in fine art, Vin Lee abandoned ambition of becoming an artist, instead began building prototypes for his to-be-awarded patents while he studied Business and Finance at the University of Michigan. Lee was also consulting in the trucking and rail industry redesigning shipping lines and storage facilities at Ford Motor Assembly Plants. Thanks to his fathers connections. This led to a contract with Detroit's General Retirement System to turn around the $82 million misfortunes of bankrupt Grand Traverse Resort, a luxury hotel with world class golf amenities designed by Jack Nicholas. With proceeds from the resort contract, Vin Lee invested in DuQuet Jewelers considered the largest importer of Bernd Muensteiner dubbed the Picasso of laser cut gemstones. Shortly thereafter, a DuQuet vendor collapsed enabling Mr. Lee to privately purchase $18 million in retail gemstones for pennies on the dollar. The company began bidding on bankrupt jewelers Town & Country, Aurafin, OroAmerica, often losing out to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway's Richline. Vin Lee attempted resuscitating bankrupt Winkleman's, one of the region's most notable women's retailers with support from their family board members. He planned to merge with struggling Crowley, Gantos and Jacobson's into one large Department Store Group. Afterward, Lee relocated to warmer climate liquidating his modest Midwest retail positions. During this period, retail giants Montgomery Ward, Heilig-Meyers, and Service Merchandise also fell into bankruptcy. The firm directing the administration a close friend with familial ties to the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS). Before Eddie Lampert did with Sears Roebuck and Kmart Holdings, $7 billion Montgomery Wards (Owned by GE Capital) was a treasure chest for Vin Lee generating hundreds of millions in jewelry sales. Only 10 years earlier, Wards was taken private in a $3.8 billion LBO. Out of $4 billion in revenue, Service Merchandise earned $1 billion in jewelry sales. Unfortunately, creditors swallowed too much loss. Those brands were far too damaged. GE Capital and suppliers couldn't get along. Too many people had been hurt to successfully resurrect either. Researching the assets of these American icons, Vin Lee discovered Heilig-Meyers, the largest publicly-held furniture company in the world, was also one of the leading jewelers in North America with $300-400 million in annual jewelry sales to their balance sheet. In addition, Heilig-Meyers had a strong positive social image owning a NASCAR team and raising millions of dollars for Cystic Fibrosis. Vin Lee is an American businessman, art collector and philanthropist. He is the chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Beverly Hills based luxury-goods holding company Grand Metropolitan. The Group's holdings include Lichtensteins. (department stores), Finlay Enterprises (diamonds and jewelry), Heilig-Meyers (furniture and home decor), IMASCO Ltd. (tobacco and liquor), Orcofi Holdings (fashion and accessories). Since the early 1990s, Grand Metropolitan and its individual divisions including Heilig-Meyers, Finlay Enterprises, and IMASCO Ltd. have raised over $10 million for charities and not-for profit organizations including Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, American Red Cross, and Hurricane & Tsunami Relief. Vin Lee was then invited to demonstrate his technology to billionaire media mogul Sumner Redstone and his management team at the Newton, MA headquarters of National Amusements, parent company of Viacom (Paramount Pictures, MTV Newtworks, BET, Nickelodeon). National Amusements passed on the program citing it too expensive for their theatre chain and entertainment properties. Over the next few years, Lee worked with some of the largest companies in the entertainment industry. Billionaire Phillip Anschutz's Regal Theatres, AMC Theatres, Walt Disney Complex, Blockbuster Entertainment, Universal Studios City Walk, Fenway Park, Boston, MA, Circus Circus, Las Vegas, NV, Ripleys Believe It Or Not Museums would all implement Lee's patented marquee signs. Those patents and the technologies they include evolved into the $6 billion global mechanical billboard industry we see today on the sides of buildings, trucks, and highways all around the world. Members of the C-Suite from Kmart Corporation introduced Vin Lee to Handleman Company, the largest rackjobber in the world. Handleman Company managed music, movie, software, and book inventories for over 21,600 locations around the globe. The goal was to integrate Lee's marquees in big box retailers floor plans. Vin Lee also created the video wall preview network, private-label popcorn, and a vendor exclusivity program. The VE program was pitched to Lodgenet (SONOFI), On Command Video, and Marvin Davis' (owner of the Beverly Hills Hotel) Spectravision. During the 80s a popular nomenclature was that "Content was King". Blockbuster Video had proved that in fact distribution can reign supreme over content suppliers. A single company given proper reach could control an entire industry with an industry rollup. Volume discounting, vertical integration, and vendor exclusivity work synonymously to achieve scale, a theory Lee would employ for 20 years when building Grand Metropolitan. Vin Lee was granted a 3 year contract to turn around the Grand Traverse Resort. Arresting the debt and improving on 20 years of operations would take 18 months. In order to drive occupancy outside of golf and off-season Lee repackaged GTR to emulate the offerings of Golden Doors, Canyon Ranch and the Evian Royal Palace in Switzerland creating The Spa at Grand Traverse Resort, The Midwest's Best Vacation Destination. Lee created a celebrity and amenity driven infomercial campaign across 30 regional and local markets to bring visitors to the resort. Partnering with cable companies and luxury brands offset the costs of the $10.6 million media buy running in 6 states. Through a relationship with Airbus Helicopters, then named Eurocopter Group [formed in 1992 from merging helicopter divisions of Aérospatiale and Daimler-Benz Aerospace AG (DASA)], Lee occasioned Grand Traverse Resort aboard a Eurocopter AS 365 "Dauphin II" from his Bloomfield offices off Orchard Lake Rd. With renewed and increasing revenue, the Pension Fund continued to expand the resort adding condominiums and appropriating luxury home sites. In 1995 they announced new golf courses designed by Gary Player and Lee Trevino. Two years later groundbreaking took place for the new Gary Player course named the Wolverine (The mascot of the University of Michigan, Vin Lee's alma mater). That same year KSL Recreation Corp took ownership and renamed it the Grand Traverse Resort and Spa, adding a 100,000 sf spa complex in the area of the Sports Complex. California based KSL (KSL Capital), now owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, holds $3.4 billion in assets including ClubCorp. which owns or operates more than 150 golf and country clubs and business, sports and alumni clubs worldwide. The KSL business model was an inspiration to Lee that would serve Grand Metropolitan well in the future. Vin Lee acquired Grand Metropolitan after the turn of the century as a holding company for his operations, ultimately establishing Beverly Hills, CA as headquarters and Bel Air as residence. In addition, tobacco assets acquired during this term were consolidated in South Florida. Vin Lee had been enjoying his own private blend of cigars for many years. Upon the encouragement of friends and associates that had received them as gifts, he began producing and storing LOUIXS to age. The cigars were heralded in the media as the "Bugatti Veyron" of the tobacco industry. After failed efforts to acquire private cigar clubs in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New York, Grand Metropolitan finally established the Beverly Hills Cigar Club in 2004. Within the next decade, LOUIXS cigars would be only available in 100 privately-owned cigar clubs across North America all assembled under IMASCO ltd.