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Management education began at ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ in 1906. The department of Commerce was first established within the Faculty of Arts, offering commercial courses to train people as accountants, clerks, and the like. In 1912, the Commerce Program was named the School of Commerce, and the first B.Com. degrees were awarded by ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ in 1915. Five years later, ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ’s School of Commerce was founded, independent of the Faculty of Arts. In 1972, the Samuel Bronfman Building, now home to the Desautels Faculty of Management, was opened at 1001 Sherbrooke Street West in the heart of downtown Montreal.

More than a century later, foundations for a world-class business school expanded to offer a BCom program; an MBA program; specialized master's programs; a joint bilingual EMBA with HEC Montréal, a program first of its kind in North America; a joint PhD program; and numerous executive programs. On November 17, 2005, a landmark gift of $22 million from the Canadian Management Foundation was donated to the Faculty through Dr. Marcel Desautels, ushering in a new era in business education at ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ. The gift fostered changes to its facilities, revamping of the BCom and MBA curricula, and hiring of new professors. In honour of his gift, the Faculty was named the Desautels Faculty of Management. Thanks to a donation from the Bensadoun Family Foundation, announced in May 2017, ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ launched the Bensadoun School of Retail Management in 2018.

For more details on the history of the Faculty, please visit mcgill.ca/desautels/about/history.