Mr. Gropper has been a senior partner of the Vancouver law firm Farris, Vaughan, Wills & Murphy LLP since 1998. Before that, he was a partner with the Vancouver office of the law firm McCarthy Tètrault LLP, including Managing Partner from 1988 to 1990. Mr. Gropper is rated by LEXPERT as one of Vancouver’s leading lawyers in mergers & acquisitions, corporate finance, mid-market advisory services, income funds and corporate commercial (one of only three lawyers so recognized), one of Canada’s 40 ‘‘Deal-Makers’’, one of Canada’s 100 most creative lawyers, and one of Canada’s 100 leading ‘‘cross-border’’ transaction lawyers. Mr. Gropper has served as a director of Vancouver-based Catalyst Paper Corp., where he was a member of the Audit Committee and Human Resources and Corporate Governance Committee and also served as a director of Vancouver- based Crew Gold Corp. Mr. Gropper is the Chair of the Federation of the Jewish Community of Greater Vancouver and recently ended a six year term as a director of Arts Club Theatre, Vancouver. Mr. Gropper received the professional designation of Queen’s Counsel in British Columbia in 1990. He received a Master of Laws from the London School of Economics in 1967 and an LLB in 1965 and BA in 1964, both from the University of Saskatchewan. Mr. Gropper was called to the Bar of British Columbia in 1966 and Ontario in 1970.