Jean Neveu, left, talks with Pierre Karl Peladeau at Quebecor's annual meeting in Montreal in 2010.SHAUN BEST
Whether he was in a boardroom, on a golf course or chatting up a circle of friends, Quebec media executive Jean Neveu could be relied upon to offer sound, hard-nosed advice.
Neveu was the hearty, heavy-set, cigar-chomping chairman of Quebecor Inc., chairman of the board of TVA, the French-language television network and a member of the board of Quebecor Media, which owns the Sun Newspaper chain.
A respected company warhorse and a former director of Quebecor World Inc., Neveu died on March 11 of a heart attack at his vacation home in Pompano Beach, Fla., two weeks after the resolution of a bitter two-year lockout at Quebecor's French-language tabloid, Journal de Montreal. He was 70.
"He was one of the great builders of the company," said Quebecor president Pierre Karl Péladeau. "All his friends knew him as a man of tremendous integrity and forthrightness. His death is a loss for the entire Quebec business community."
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney, a Quebecor board member, called Neveu "a product of Quebec's Quiet Revolution. He was at the top of his game, always on the ball."
Jean Neveu was born in Montreal, Jan. 28, 1941, and was a graduate of the École des Hautes Études Commercial. While going to school, he worked at an accounting firm in Joliette. When he obtained his degree in 1969, Quebecor founder Pierre Péladeau hired him to be his corporate controller just as his fledgling printing company was beginning to grow.
Neveu quickly became one of Péladeau's most trusted advisers. He occupied several management positions in what was then a family-owned business and earned a solid reputation as a bean-counter. He left in 1976 to become vice-president of finance for a rival publishing company, GTC Transcontinental, that was then just getting off the ground. By then Neveu was drinking heavily and didn't stay long at Transcontinental. He then went through a series of jobs, working for a distribution company, Distributeurs Associés du Québec, that was sold to Benjamin News, then joined a magazine publishing company, Éditions le Nordais. When that company was eventually acquired by Quebecor in 1988, he found himself back in the Quebecor fold. With the founding of the company's printing division in 1989, Neveu was put in charge.
"Pierre Peladeau recognized that Neveu understood the business that he was good at printing at a profit," one company insider said. "He was also the only person who could tell Péladeau when he was out of whack, and tell him why he was out of whack. Péladeau always respected him for that."
Neveu joined AA, quit drinking and never looked back. Under his guidance, the printing operation's earnings per share soared between 1990 and 1997. He was sent to Philadelphia to shut down the money-losing Philadelphia Journal that Quebecor had started four years earlier, and the following year closed the Montreal Daily News, a short-lived English-language tabloid.
"He was gruff, bluff, but straight on," said former Daily News publisher Jim Duff. "He lived large. Guys who worked with him appreciated his frankness. He was a problem solver. He knew absolutely everything there was to know about printing."
When Pierre Péladeau died in 1997, Neveu took over as Quebecor's president and CEO, expecting to spend the next five years grooming Pierre Karl, then 35, to take over the reins. But Pierre Karl stepped into his father's shoes within two years, and Neveu took over as board chairman. When the company's printing operation, Quebec World - then the world's largest printer, with annual sales of $6-billion - ran into trouble, Pierre Karl depended on Neveu to restructure the company.
Neveu cut thousands of jobs and consolidated printing plants. There were, he explained, simply "too many people chasing not enough work."
Neveu was a pillar of the Quebec South Shore community of Longueuil, he served as chairman of the Pavillon Pierre-Péladeau, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre, and took an interest in a folk dancing school for children and teenagers.
He leaves his second wife, Doris Guerette, whom he married in 1982, and three children, Marie-Josée, Louis-Philppe and Émilie.