I worked with Don Wehby twice, once when I was at GraceKennedy and again as part of an advisory group when he became minister of finance in the Bruce Golding Administration. On both occasions, it was very clear to me that, in all his actions, Wehby always put Jamaica first and was extremely proud of his country.

Of course, similar to what they used to say about General Motors in the United States, he also believed that what was good for Jamaica was good for GraceKennedy, and vice versa. During my time at GraceKennedy, at least, I think he was right.

I joined GraceKennedy in September 2000 after an interview with Wehby. At my interview it was clear he had a vision for expanding the Financial Services Division of GraceKennedy (he was both chief financial officer and head of the Financial Services Division) starting with a mutual fund and subsequently a stockbrokerage, building on the acquisition of the other half of its joint venture with Trafalgar Commercial Bank that he had recently engineered, which became GraceKennedy’s commercial bank.

As a former St George’s College alumni, of which he was also very proud, he apparently persuaded fellow Georgian, the late great Raymond Chang, founder and then chairman of one of largest investment management businesses in Canada, to chair GraceKennedy’s foray into the mutual fund space. Chang also became a director of GraceKennedy. While that was my first project on joining GraceKennedy, he also had our team start a stockbrokerage from scratch, insisting that it should launch the first of four new brokerages, in the process achieving a number two market share in its first year of operation.

COMING OUT OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

Coming out of the financial crisis, Jamaica’s financial sector was flat on its back, recovering from a financial collapse that cost Jamaica 40 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP), with GraceKennedy being one of the few large entities left standing.

It was clear that navigating this experience had impacted Wehby, who combined a highly entrepreneurial approach with financial caution, repeatedly stating that “cash is king”, no doubt reflecting his accounting background.

Wehby was happy to support my involvement in the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica’s (PSOJ) Economic Policy Committee while he was also a member, and was a quiet supporter of the Digicel-sponsored Partnership for Progress joint initiative of the PSOJ and the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC), which began in 2003 as a response to Jamaica’s solvency crisis that began shortly after the 2002 election. I remember him giving a speech on the relevance of the Irish turnaround in 1987 to Jamaica, focusing particularly on the importance of trust, reflecting the values of GraceKennedy.

Wehby strongly believed in the private sector working closely with the Government to get things done, and this is what made him make what, for him, would have been the great sacrifice of leaving GraceKennedy to join the Golding Administration in 2007.

Whilst he had an admiration for former Prime Minister Edward Seaga’s management style, I never saw him operate either as minister of finance or senator in any way other than in a non-partisan fashion. I remember being highly amused when it was rumoured that he intended to become a Member of Parliament, because it was clear to me that his first love was always GraceKennedy, to which he indeed returned in late 2009.

A couple months after being invited to join the Golding Administration in 2007 (which was a complete surprise to him), Wehby was a key participant at the National Planning Summit held between the new Government and the private sector, with PricewaterhouseCoopers as the key facilitator. The summit had seven key planning themes meant to represent Jamaica’s key challenges, namely job creation/investment promotion; balancing the budget/debt reduction; tax reform; land titling reform; crime, violence, and justice; education and training; governance/reducing bureaucracy, as well as a special paper on Ireland’s economic turnaround prepared by a joint PSOJ-JCC team.

The reform agenda outlined was, however, deliberately similar to the mantra of then Minister of Finance Audley Shaw — namely debt reduction, tax reform, bureaucracy reduction, and investment promotion, but without Shaw’s emphasis on energy.

Coming out of the 2007 summit, nearly a year later, Minister Wehby’s expert private sector team of tax reform/balancing the budget/debt reduction was the first out of the block. To my surprise he asked me to join (probably reflecting my knowledge of the financial sector), as well as a leading tax accountant, academic economist, and private sector financial analyst of the public sector.

This was an extremely difficult period, as Jamaica was now experiencing the full impact of the global financial crisis which began even before the new Government took office in 2007. Wehby’s committee started just after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008. The challenge included a now-full-blown global financial sector crisis, with trade and world economies collapsing at the fastest rate since the global depression of the 1930s.

Despite the extreme pressure, Wehby managed to stay calm, focused, and collegial, beginning the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) negotiations, getting through the ridiculously difficult April 2009 budget (then Prime Minister Golding was persuaded to tax gas), and reviewing “a blueprint for tax reform” with the aid of the team’s tax guru.

He returned to GraceKennedy in late 2009 as heir apparent, because it was clear that his former boss and mentor Douglas Orane would soon be retiring, and I believe he had a different style of management post his time in the public sector.

One of the things he strongly believed in was the concept of a Caribbean Stock Exchange, cross listing GraceKennedy’s shares across the region. I had once adapted one of my dad’s old speeches on the topic for him, which unfortunately did not require much changing. One can only hope Caricom will finally get this done as they promised again in Montego Bay a few weeks ago. Hopefully, Jamaica will drive this through to honour Wehby.

Walk good, Don, in the knowledge you made a difference to your beloved Jamaica.