Hillsdown

"Hillsdown grew, according to the London Telegraph, “at a breathless pace,” quickly making it Britain’s largest producer of eggs, meat, and canned foods. In just two years during the mid-1980s, Hillsdown completed more than forty acquisitions. “At one stage he was buying a company every week. He bought cheap and slashed costs,”"

"“Yeah,” Roome said in agreement from Newfoundland. “And the fact that he recognized the value of enterprise allocation and quota better than anybody.” For his part, Risley didn’t dispute that some of the Hillsdown-funded acquisitions failed to deliver, arguing that’s expected when you’re doing a “shitload of"

"MacDonald also alleged Risley spent millions of dollars from their shared holdings when Clearwater was backed by Hillsdown, and also pre-spent their proceeds from the Ocean Nutrition sale. “The money is the business money. It’s not your personal money. And John has never been able to divide the two.” According to MacDonald, this was the real reason they’d launched the initial public offering (IPO) of Clearwater units. “The company was borrowing money to operate, and it wasn’t going just to operations. It was being spent... on his personal [expenses]. They’ll let some of that happen, but not to the extent that it was happening. I think that scared him.”"

"Risley admitted to being blind to an imbalance in the relationship: he was the dealmaker and while MacDonald could spend money, he lacked financial independence. “It was all resident in the fact that I controlled all the money,” Risley said. “I remember writing to him on his birthday a year after we had broken up. I said to him, ‘Look, I never understood that I had you trapped. I trapped you in this relationship.... You had access to all the lifestyle money you wanted [but] you were still subservient to me.’” What they should have done, Risley argued, was have a “come-to-Jesus session” at least every five years, starting around 1990, after they split with Hillsdown. That way each partner could have vented their concerns and proposed ways to fix any fissures in the relationship. Instead, MacDonald was too tolerant of the arrangement and Risley assumed the relationship was fine. “I should have been much more sensitive to his concerns, and I should have listened better,” Risley added. “I think the benefit to the reader of this story should be that, look, we didn’t do a good job of managing the last ten or fifteen years of our relationship. And that’s our bad. Do you want to put the preponderance of the blame on me? I’ve got absolutely no problem with that.” But, he concluded, “I can’t do anything about what’s behind me.”"

"“So am I fair in saying that at these different stages—with Hillsdown, Clearwater going public, and the sale of Ocean Nutrition—that John was pre-spending the money?” I asked. “Oh, fuck yeah,” MacDonald shot back. “He was building, buying, and pissing money away. I didn’t have a problem with him spending money. I simply assumed my money was still in the company.”"