Michael Cowpland
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Michael Cowpland (born April 23, 1943) is a Canadian businessman, the founder and one-time president, chairman and CEO of Corel, a Canadian software company.
Cowpland was born in Bexhill, Sussex, England and obtained a BSc. in engineering from Imperial College before moving to Canada in 1964. He completed his masters (1968) and Ph.D. (1973) at Carleton University, Ottawa.
He worked for Bell Northern Research (later part of Nortel Networks) and then MicroSystems International. In 1973, Cowpland and Terry Matthews founded Mitel Networks, a company that developed and sold electronic PBX systems. Initial success made both founders millionaires. Sales peaked at $250 million but over-expansion and development problems saw the company bought by British Telecom. Both Cowpland and Matthews left the company in 1984 amid disagreements with the owners.
Matthews went on to found Newbridge Networks while Cowpland launched Cowpland Research Laboratory (soon Corel) in Ottawa in 1985. At first the company sold DTP workstations, but success did not arrive until the launch of the graphics software, CorelDraw in 1989. In 1996 he offered a challenge to Microsoft with a move into productivity software, acquiring WordPerfect from Novell for $158 million. The company also made unsuccessful forays into CAD, videoconferencing, Java, Linux and other developments. He survived an investigation by the Ontario Securities Commission in 1999-2000 into allegations that he had used insider information to sell $20 million in Corel shares at $8/share shortly before the company posted disappointing results. Subsequently by November 1999 Corel shares hit a peak of $60/share during the height of the Linux boom when Corel's version of Desktop Linux was seen to be a potential rival to Microsoft Windows.
With the company in a spiral of falling sales, Cowpland left Corel in August 2000. He currently heads Zim Technologies International, a wireless technology company he bought in 2001.
In 1992 he married his second wife, Marlen Cowpland. They live a famously lavish lifestyle in a 20,000 ft² house in Rockcliffe Park, Ottawa.