Gilmour

"I had the prospectus of Roberts Realty, so we knew where their sales office was in London. David was articulate, smart and elegant; he looked rich, and he talked rich. He went to the Roberts office and got all the sales information we needed. That was tremendously helpful to me back at Prince Arthur Avenue when I designed the sales program. With the Roberts information as a model I knew what to do: the prices, how to structure the lots, the size of the lots, plus of course Project Planning information about design, and information about the marketing from Gilmour. After the second time he was at the Roberts sales office he asked the salesman out for lunch and got out of him the commission structure, the overhead structure, the whole marketing approach. It only took us a week. We got the whole Roberts structure. I was working with Cochran, Murray. It was very rough going. They could have raised $2 million. That would have been a wild gamble; but $4 million was the minimum. I could not do it for less. I could not take a chance, after what I'd gone through with Clairtone, to be short a million bucks. I just couldn’."

"Peter Munk explains the interrelationship between the Swiss— Canadian proposal and the Fiji development project: I said to David, “Whichever gets financed first, we'll go with. An idea is good only if it’s financeable. ’'m going to work my guts out in both of them, but within eighteen months, I’ve got to have a job, I’ve got to work and not just promote. So whatever comes first, the other will get thrown out.” Fiji got financed first, because of Gilmour's contacts. So we dropped Swiss—Canadian and focused totally on the Fiji proposal. The concept of securitized mortgages, especially with government guarantees, was exciting, but it was just too difficult to get an underwriting. Also, Roberto Gancia was very rich, so for him the pressure was less."

"Munk decided that with the move to London he would separate his and Gilmour's activities on behalf of Pacific Harbour from the direct supply of services to the development company. As he told his shareholders, “a management company was formed under my chairmanship to provide management services to our group of companies.” The key word was group. Corporations in the Munk supervisory group were Canadian, Bahamian, British and Fijian. Undoubtedly, there would be others to be formed as the needs of Munk and Gilmour's entrepreneurial activities might dictate."

"It was during this same summer that Munk and Gilmour first met the famous Saudi Arabian entrepreneur, the billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and his brother Essam."

"When I reviewed all of this a year and a half later with Birchall and Gilmour and Khashoggi, I said, “You know, we never lost so much money quicker. And we're smart guys, where did we go wrong?” I went through every single thing I’d done in Viking and actually had a full review. We found nothing wrong with our decision-making process. We'd do absolutely the whole thing over again. And yet we totally screwed up in eighteen months. We lost a big bundle of money. We had our tax losses and some other leftovers, and eventually we got part of our money back."

"I've often made big initial strategic decisions on my own. I've had lovely partners like Gilmour and Birchall, but somehow I still feel they look to me as the person responsible for coming up with the strategic initiatives. When the proverbial hits the fan I have to come up with the right response, and for that you need your mental stability when the pressure is the greatest. With the things I’ve done, I’ve had to be tough, because otherwise you can be destroyed. Being out in the fresh air and doing physical things and being removed from business environments has helped me enormously in coping."

"During the remainder of 1987, Munk focused on raising capital for American Barrick Resources. He left the mining development to Bob Smith and his professionals. Munk and Gilmour, with their expert number-cruncher partner, Bill Birchall, would orchestrate the money mining."

"The reality check is that I call my colleagues. That used to be Gilmour, now it’s also Birchall, always, for the last thirty years. It’s also Greg Wilkins, and others whose judgement we trust. Certainly when it comes to Barrick it’s Smith. Then I pitch them and then usually they go along. But after all, their destiny is tied up with their decision so they are just as involved as I am. Then we have another meeting and we have a fifth meeting and eventually we come up with a platform and a position. We listen to each other and talk, and then boom, we go. That's how it works."