Peter de Jager


Peter de Jager is best known for his Y2K early 1990s outcry warning, and is the honoree of the eponymous de Jager Year 2000 index that began trading on the American Stock Exchange in 1997.
De Jager co-authored "Countdown Y2K: Business Survival Planning for the Year 2000 and periodically writes for Canada's Municipal World magazine, focusing on Change Management.

Y2K

From around 1980, as an IBM employee, he internally alerted them to the problem.
In 1993 de Jager wrote a three page item titled "Doomsday 2000" about the effects of simple date calculations, and "testified before Congress in 1996." His initial estimation of "the cost of fixing Y2K at between $50 billion and $70 billion" was subsequently reported to have been too low: Numbers like "only" $200 Billion to over $300 Billion proved more correct, with $120 Billion by USA firms.
De Jager registered and built, www.year2000.com, a website he later sold.
Part of his "we don't know in advance what will fail,... so we have to fix everything" message was quoted by The New York Times in the summer of 1998, which listed examples of cascading effects on "smoke alarms, lighting systems and even thermostats in individual apartments." Fears of elevators that would go up and not come down were reported.
Although de Jager was quoted as not owning "a single share of any year-2000 stock" and that he "never mentioned a vendor from the stage" his year2000.com website had "a list of Y2K consultants and experts;" Forbes magazine wrote that he "makes money selling advertising on his Y2K web site."

Consulting

His "eponymous consulting firm" is based in Vancouver.

Personal

He was born in South Africa.
The wife of the 1955-born de Jager is named Antoinette, and they have two sons.

Extern links