Michael Lee-Chin was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica to black and Chinese Jamaicans. When Lee-Chin was 7 his mother married Vincent Chen. He attended Titchfield High School between 1962 and 69.

In 1970 he earned a scholarship to study Civil Engineering at McMaster University in Canada. He worked briefly as a road engineer for the Jamaican Government but unable to find a job in his qualified field he returned to Canada.

He had various jobs until he secured a loan in 1983 for C$500,000 from the Continental Bank of Canada and purchased a stake in Mackenzie Financial Group and formed Kicks Athletics with Andrew Gayle which was worth C$3.5 million by 1987.

With these proceeds he bought a Kitchener based company called the Advantage Investment Council for C$200,000. He renamed the company AIC and developed it into a fund that today controls C$6 billion, with hundreds of investors.

He continued to form and acquire companies that deals in investments, securities and insurance through the Berkshire Group of Companies which by 2007 amassed C$12 billion in assets. On October 5, 2006, Lee-Chin announced his resignation fron AIC and was replaced by Johnathan Wellum, AIC's Chief Investment Officer. He remains as AIC's