The Canadian Establishment by Peter C. Newman

Author:Peter C. Newman [Newman, Peter C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55199-690-5
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2015-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

THE ACTIVISTS WHO RUN ALBERTA’S OIL PATCH enjoy telling their Eastern compatriots: “If you’re thinking of going West and want to work, try Calgary; if you want to come West and don’t feel like working, move to Vancouver.”

It’s not true. Just because Vancouver’s new-style Establishmentarians have learned to play doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten how to work. The cost of Making It in B.C. comes as high as it does anywhere else: right out of the marrow. Even if they spend an inordinate amount of energy jogging, sailing, and playing at every conceivable sport except bullfighting, they’re really in training for more serious pursuits. Prime time is still work time. Jack Poole of Daon expressed it best when he told Vancouver Sun business writer Jim Lyon, “I’ve got two interests – family and business – and I would be less than honest if I said family was first, and they know that – it’s just a glandular reaction.”

The new Acquisitors love the intricacies of a really complicated deal, breathing heavily over the cash-flow projections, depreciation allowances, and tax writeoffs as if they were reciting their rosaries. “The tougher the deal, the more complicated, the more I like it,” Bob Carter admits. “On the $22-million Mosbacher oil purchase there were 156 lawyers and accountants involved, and I finally had to draw the whole thing out for them on a blackboard. We had to get a special exemption from the securities commission to put it together, and I still get calls from accountants in the big tax firms asking me how it was done.”

This is an extraordinary statement from a man whose formal schooling ended in Grade 8 and who consistently refuses to keep standard working files on any of his transactions. Writing in Canadian Business, Janet Marchant described Carter’s conversation on the telephone during a typical negotiation: “Well, fuck ’im! I’m not gonna offer $10 million for his rig – I’ll go nine, nine and a half. Hey Joanne! [He calls his secretary.] Do you have that business card? I wrote the whole deal down on the back. I keep good notes on stuff like this …”

Carter’s contempt for details is typical of his breed. “I never read any of the small print,” confesses Nelson Skalbania. “The key to my success is being involved with partners who read what we’re both signing.” Some of his partners, including Bob Lee and Fred Stimpson, tested this theory on Nelson’s thirty-eighth birthday when they threw an informal party in his office and decided to play a practical joke. At the noisiest point in the proceedings, they thrust a complicated contract at him on which he promptly scribbled his signature. Only later did they tell him that for a dollar he’d signed over to them his $1.25-million house.

When members of the same trio finished negotiating for the purchase of four major buildings making up a city block in downtown Houston, they sat down for a celebratory dinner. It had been a quick, profitable deal, but none of them seemed certain about precisely what they’d purchased.

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