Tele-Metropole

"At the same time, Desmarais made abortive bids for Tele-Metropole ($97 million), which operates a French tv station in Montreal, and Teleglobe Canada ($300 million), the Crown corporation that provides overseas long-distance phone services to Canadians. He also wanted to buy Domtar and Donohue, two huge forest and packaging products companies, for merger with Consolidated-Bathurst. The two had been acquired by the Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec under the Parti Quebecois regime in Quebec in the early 1980s. The unsuccessful bids for Tele-Metropole and Teleglobe put a crimp in Desmarais’s plans for the Power Corp. that he hoped to hand over to his sons. Desmarais wanted Tele-Metropole for two reasons, one being that it would make the perfect core corporation for another Power subsidiary he wished to set up and call Power Communications. All of Power’s communications holdings — the daily and weekly newspapers, publishing interests, radio and tv — most of them held through Gesca Ltee., would be grouped in the new company, which would be created much the same way Power Financial had been. His younger son, Andre, a Power vice-president in charge of communi¬ cations holdings, would eventually assume presidency of the new company, as his brother, Paul Jr., had at Power Financial."

"There were subsequent rumours that Power might buy Videotron, which was allowed to buy Tele-Metropole, and Memmotec Industries, which bought Teleglobe. With Desmarais anything, especially the unexpected, is possible, if the price is right. That the price be right is critical, though, to Desmarais’s decisions. After getting caught with overpriced CP stock, he has become more price sensitive. If Desmarais wants Teleglobe and Tele-Metropole badly enough, he’ll find a way to buy them, without paying an outrageous premium just to get control. And because either purchase would be subject to crtc approval, Desmarais would have to ensure the bid was so brilliant that any refusal would constitute a national scandal."