Power Corporation of Canada

"was on because I had been following the adventures of business people like Carl Icahn, Western Canada’s Belzberg brothers, and Rupert Murdoch, who started with nothing, or next to nothing, built corporate empires and, coincidentally, huge personal fortunes. Desmarais emerged as the most fascinating of the lot: chairman, chief executive officer and controlling shareholder of Montreal-based Power Corporation of Canada, the tip of a large corporate pyramid worth billions of dollars. He achieved his position by investing $1 in 1951 and reinvesting the profits ever since."

"Power Corporation of Canada, the holding company Nesbitt and Thomson envisioned, was designed to serve a number of purposes. First, by setting it up as a joint-stock company they would control, Nesbitt and Thomson could participate in a large number of hydro¬ electricity developments without throwing all their wealth into the venture. The holding company offered greater buying power with a pool of investment money raised through a share offering. Power Corporation thus offered diversification of investments: by spreading the investment risk among many passive investors, they reduced over¬ all risk by leaving reinvestment of the pool in the hands of managers with expertise in the field."

"Paribas owned a share of Volvo Sweden; Volvo Sweden owned a piece of Paribas. Paribas owned a share of Groupe Frere Bourgeois of Belgium; Groupe Frere Bourgeois owned a share of Paribas. The same held true with Power Corporation of Canada, S. G. Warburg (u.s. merchant bankers), and the British Becker Group (stock under¬ writing, financiers, general securities dealers), the last two of whom had joined Paribas in an international merchant banking venture, W arburg-Paribas-B ecker."