Paul Desmarais

Biography

Paul Desmarais, Jr. has been a member of the SGS Board of Directors since 2013. He has a Bachelor of Commerce Degree from McGill University, Montréal and an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. He has received honorary doctorates from various Canadian universities. He joined Power Corporation of Canada in 1981 and assumed the position of Vice-President the following year. In 1984, he led the creation of Power Financial Corporation to consolidate Power’s major financial holdings, as well as Pargesa Holding SA, under a single corporate entity. 

Research Interest

As chemical use in consumer products continues to grow, health hazards, particularly for children’s products, are a constant industry focus. We help to alleviate your concerns by offering a range of laboratory services to test the safety of your goods and help control chemical use according to the tolerance levels in place for your industry. From pesticides and petrochemicals to perfumes and paints, chemicals and the products made from them are everywhere. That is why the chemicals industry is such big business, central to modern world economy. In its most fundamental form, we view the chemicals industry as converting raw materials such as oil, natural gas, air, water, metals and minerals into literally tens of thousands of finished products.It goes without saying that the chemicals industry is also highly complex, filled with intricate equipment and sometimes difficult and dangerous logistics.