With my barehands....
Paul Martin today:
Hmmm.
I thought you were hired as Maurice Strong's personal assistant - the family friend who was head of Power Corp - who owned CSL. You then were put on the board of CSL, then President, and then the next year, in a sweet-heart leveraged deal, bought the company for $190 million.
Your typical rags to riches story right. Right?
I still chuckle to myself when I read this post I wrote near the end of the last election - I quoted the following:
Lots of Martin and CSL details on Wiki. I didn't even know this piece of trivia:
"Let me tell you, I am very proud of having started with a small Canadian company, uh, a small Canadian company, which today, uh, build, uh, most of it's ships in Canada…."
Hmmm.
I thought you were hired as Maurice Strong's personal assistant - the family friend who was head of Power Corp - who owned CSL. You then were put on the board of CSL, then President, and then the next year, in a sweet-heart leveraged deal, bought the company for $190 million.
Your typical rags to riches story right. Right?
I still chuckle to myself when I read this post I wrote near the end of the last election - I quoted the following:
"I wanted to go the Third World and Maurice Strong was very actively involved in the Third World and I really wanted to get involved in environmental matters ... and he was a leading environmentalist," Martin says.
He met with Strong at his home near Geneva.
"And I said, `Look, I want to get a job in the Third World.' And he said, `That's all we need in the Third World, another lawyer. I can't think of anything more useless. Go into business, learn a little bit about business, and then you can go.'
"I said, `That makes sense,' so I went into business and I stayed."
It's a story told so often, it is part of the Martin legend.
But Strong says "it is not quite true." He says he didn't suggest Martin go into business.
"He was interested in getting business experience and he came to ask me about business and about what would be good preparation for that," says Strong in a telephone interview. "I did tell him that if he continued to be interested, I would be happy to see what I could do and be as helpful as I could."
Which he did. In 1966, as president of Montreal-based Power Corp. of Canada, Strong hired Martin as his personal assistant.
Lots of Martin and CSL details on Wiki. I didn't even know this piece of trivia:
His declaration of assets upon entering Parliament included ownership of dozens of companies around the world, thirty-three ships, office buildings, apartment blocks and movie theatres. In 2004 Forbes.com estimated Martin's personal wealth at $225,000,000 (USD).
