NOW WE FACED AUTUMN WITH the release of Breeden’s Special Committee report. I was about to be drawn and quartered with any remains burned at the stake and ashes dumped into the sewage system. The report would be a murderous assault, that would destroy any little credibility left after the depredations of the last nine months. I braced myself.
After fourteen months of labour, the $60 million operation gave birth. Breeden’s Special Committee report titled “A Corporate Kleptocracy” was released on August 30. It was more brazen than I had expected and created a firestorm. My associates and I were labelled as racketeers. We had fraudulently looted $400 million. The company had been used as a piggy bank for “our sole benefit and in a manner that violated every concept of fiduciary duty.” We had taken 95.2 per cent of Hollinger’s entire adjusted net income from 1997 to 2003 and lined our pockets “almost every day, in every way” we could devise. This was always what Breeden was going to do and the appeasers, like Atkinson and the Audit Committee, were shown no mercy.
My counsel and I were relieved, though not surprised, that there was nothing new in it: old, stale wine in a new Nebuchadnezzar bottle. It fetched up at 513 repetitive pages of bombast and polemics, but impressed the media as an unanswerable indictment of our “kleptocracy.” I thought at once that Breeden had finally opened the kimono to reveal the modesty of what it had concealed.
My relief was genuine in the sense that by now confidence in some of my associates was challenged and I knew Breeden would not hold back. So no newly discovered or alleged skulduggery was something of a tonic. But I was under no illusions. I was having difficulty enough functioning in the poisoned climate already and the report would make my life even rougher. This was a bombshell of misinformation and error with the appearance of being fully researched and notated. What journalists or commentators, after all, would or could carefully analyze more than five hundred pages and meet their deadlines? And to be fair, how indeed were journalists to evaluate the report? How were they to establish that in fact the Audit Committee had been told of payments when the report said they hadn’t? How were they to distinguish truth from error? Most of the media wanted to believe what was in the report, it was so damning and so colourful (the authors knew their market’s tastes well). It was beyond belief that a report could be so sure of itself, so apparently detailed in its revelations of wrongdoing and yet untrue. Apart from the Murdoch media, which would have retailed a snow-white report as a nightmare of rapine and felony, or our old foes on the left like the Guardian, most journalists are not inclined to outright falsification.
In his assault, Breeden and his amanuenses improvised mightily. I had no right to have the company support charities sponsored by directors. This was such an unheard of concept, it didn’t resonate. Little more successful was the foray into Rooseveltiana. The fact that I wrote the book meant that I was not “a full-time chairman,” and the fact that there were six footnotes out of over 2,000 total that mentioned Roosevelt memorabilia I had had Hollinger buy, impugned my right to my royalties. But the pièce de résistance came with the allegation that I had had the company pay over $7 million for Roosevelt material Breeden claimed (the auction house) Christies had found was worth only $2.4 million. They squeezed what they could out of this absurd allegation, and did not correct the record when the U.S. government intervened to stop the sale, and by act of Congress the material was deeded to the National Archives for a tax receipt (not that the company had any taxable operating income after Breeden and his claque took it over), of undisclosed size, but vastly exceeding Christies’ piffling stitched-up pseudo-valuation.
The day after the report was released, I was sent one hundred pages of negative newspaper stories about myself. This was only a partial selection of English-language reports and didn’t take into account newspapers across the world, especially in Europe and Australia. This media lambasting continued apace for nearly eighteen months. I had not been featured in a New York Times editorial before and this was not my dream debut. Their September 2 editorial headlined “CORPORATE KLEPTOCRACY” began “White-collar crooks typically skim from the top, but Conrad Black stands accused of pocketing the whole top, the middle and much of the bottom of his company’s assets.” I could hear the squeals of delight this must have caused Jonathan Rosenberg, counsel at O’Melveny & Myers, who was apparently the co-author of the report with Richard Breeden, as he and Breeden saw their title so prominently featured. Though the editorial managed a qualified “stands accused” in the first line, it went on to equate us matter-of-factly with Enron and Tyco and “other tales of corporate thievery.” This became the template for reporting.
The Chicago Sun-Times, our company’s newspaper, took up quoting from the report with fervour. The National Post had one of my children living in a “caravan” on my luxurious Toronto property, implying either a callous father or wicked stepmother. In the early days a great deal of attention was focused on the allegations against “spendthrift” Barbara. She was accused of frivolous spending both of company money and my money (which by the report’s definition was the company’s money as well – apparently I was entitled to no pay for my work) and of manipulating me to spend so much money on our lifestyle that I was reduced to stealing from the company to meet her endless demands.* The assertions were bunk but trotted out endlessly and most often by female writers. Mary Kenny in the Guardian derided, “Barbara Amiel, Lady Black, who was paid 600,000 pounds for her weekly dose of relentlessly pro-Israeli propaganda,” an anger made worse, Kenny confessed, because she felt she had been underappreciated and underpaid herself at the Telegraph. Kenny was a writer Barbara had always championed and respected. At the London Times, deputy editor Mary Ann Sieghart, a cordial social acquaintance, felt well enough informed to ridicule Barbara for “claiming her jogging clothes on expenses, despite being paid $1.1 million for doing very little.” This much-mentioned jogging suit listed at $140 has never been found by us and would never have been charged to the company in the first place even if it existed. Nor are we aware that the exemplary journalist Ms. Sieghart knew a fig about how much work Barbara did, what she was paid, or cared.
I was compared to Dr. Faustus in the Globe and Mail, Richelieu and Fagan in the Independent (which could not be expected to know that they were hardly compatible characters). The U.K. press was unequalled in its malice. The Peter Simple column in the Daily Telegraph, written by another favourite columnist of Barbara and formerly fawning Telegraph courtier, delighted in naming a toad Amiel. Later on, the Mail on Sunday even went so far as to track down and badger Barbara’s eighty-eight-year-old stroke-ridden mother, in southwestern Ontario, feeding her lies about how her daughter had publicly blamed her for all her misfortunes and waving money in front of the mentally compromised old lady if she would “tell all.” The double-spread story featured a photo of Barbara’s mother in a wheelchair, and began with the quote “Barbara always blamed us.” Barbara’s stepfather wrote her an apology but she chose not to complain to the British Press Council because that would have exposed her mother’s condition.
From this point on, I was described as “disgraced,” compared un-favourably with every white-collar fraudster and crook, while countless people who had been my guests at a lunch or dinner put in their oar by feeding the appetite for nasty anecdotes to reveal how odious both Barbara and I were. Given the thousands of pages of nasty articles, it’s pointless to select individual abominations. We faced this every day, month after month.
In terms of real damage, the report created a nuclear fallout from which I would not soon recover. The initial “improperly authorized payments,” a concept that had been heavily compromised from its original presentation as more and more evidence that Breeden, Paris, and Thompson had withheld about them in November came to light, were nevertheless elevated to proof of criminal wrongdoing. They now had “the character of thefts.” Breeden had publicly stated in January that he had no evidence of foreknowledge of these payments by me. Nothing had happened since, except for my refusal to be an accomplice in his destruction of our company. The related-party transactions were all mendaciously trotted out. The great gains that the company received from our efforts as buyers, managers, and vendors of assets were never mentioned. That we gained more than a billion dollars of added value for the shareholders, improved every newspaper we bought, defeated Murdoch in the London price war, shrank the company at great advantage to the shareholders even though it meant reduced income for us, and sustained ourselves as owners of a large number of single-voting shares though it was burdensome to do so and unnecessary for control of the company, was also never mentioned. The 95 per cent of profits claim was false and a red herring; the per cent taken by management should have been calculated against cash flow. The difference is that net profit was reduced by large non-cash items, especially depreciation and amortization, which reduced taxes and amplified cash, which could be applied to debt reduction, acquisitions, dividends, and so on. In such businesses, cash flow is a more important yardstick of performance than net profit. By this measure, as the Special Committee was perfectly well aware,* our compensation was standard for the industry and not controversial.
Furthermore, our compensation was deducted from taxable income, which was assessed at a rate of about 35 per cent. So, although the allegation was made to incite the inference that we scooped 95 per cent of operating profit, only the one per cent of the media-consuming public that is familiar with financial terminology would realize that the entire central management function cost the company, after tax, not 95 per cent of what would have been the net profit, as was implied, but about 27 per cent of what would have been the pre-tax profit, or 17 per cent of the net profit, or 13 per cent of the cash flow. (In each case as if there had been no cost of management at all. Cash flow is net cash after all cash expenses, including taxes. It effectively adds depreciation and amortization, non-cash charges, back to net profit, and in a business where there is extensive physical plant and assets like newspapers, depreciation tends to be high, though capital expenses are moderate, due to the relatively long life of presses.) These percentages were normal, were published every year in full detail, and were judged unremarkable by everyone except Christopher Browne and Laura Jereski.
The thrust was clear. I was never to return to Hollinger. I was to be made bankrupt (my net worth was less than what Hollinger must recoup from me, Breeden stated) and I was to go to prison. If Breeden could not generate indictments and convictions from this report, he would fail.
The directors had been whipped into line, espousing an account of events they ought to have known was wrong, by threats of Breeden siding with Christopher Browne, who from time to time demanded publicly that the directors be made complicit with us. Such threats were a significant cause of all that was to follow. Though empty, the notion was terrifying to timorous men used to a world in which their eminence and probity were celebrated. None of them wanted their time taken up with endless depositions and sessions with their lawyers. In the post-Enron climate, it was too dangerous as well as tedious. Their lawyers would have advised complete and immediate co-operation with Breeden, the SEC, the prosecutors, and, if necessary, the local witch doctor.
In return, Breeden (deservedly) gave the independent directors a clean bill of health in the report legally. It was only a few weeks before I received a conciliatory overture from Henry Kissinger, via Norman Podhoretz, a loyal friend who had been editor of Commentary magazine for thirty-five years. I picked up the olive branch (which was for a time used as firewood by Barbara) by assuring Norman, who told Henry, that I assumed we could resume relations when this contemptible farce had been concluded.
I had warned Rick Burt that his Faustian bargain in engaging Breeden would not work: Breeden used the Audit Committee in his vendetta against my associates and me and then threw the Audit Committee to the wolves also.
I had also cautioned Richard Perle, when his lawyer, the capable but monumentally abrasive Dennis Block, said that “Supporting Conrad is the kiss of death” and urged cuddling up to Breeden, that this would not work. Breeden attacked Richard in his report as a “faithless fiduciary” and demanded the return of every cent he had received from Hollinger. The Audit Committee and Richard Perle had been put on the spit and roasted like Saint Lawrence.
Richard Burt, Jim Thompson, and the hastily departed Marie-Josée Kravis were accused of being negligent and incompetent to the point of yielding their rights to the directors’ and officers’ liability insurance. Kravis had at least remained publicly silent and thus retained a little freedom to retreat from the Thompson-Burt position that they had been duped by David Radler year after year on a scale that somehow constituted racketeering by me. They and Richard Perle could have screwed up their courage from the beginning and said that the payments approved had been in recognition of an undoubtedly fine management performance, that the amounts were not out of order with comparable companies, and that they need not apologize for any of it. As it was, Burt and Thompson by approving the acceptance and publication of Breeden’s report, engaged in wholesale self-defamation.
It was a classic revolutionary sequence, as the long-established gave way to moderates (in my brief interregnum as non-executive chairman) who evolved into or were replaced by radical reformers, then terrorists, until common sense asserted itself, Thermidor shone forth, and vengeance was visited on the extremists. It is a complete and deadly cycle, though in this case the end is visible but not yet achieved as I write.
It was also another mighty ratchet upwards of Breeden’s war. In addition to being a cornucopia of lethal accusations, it was also a promise to recover a billion dollars from the deposed owners, and to lead the company forward to unprecedented profitability. Except for Perle, they all signed on to this, Thompson and Burt agreeing implicitly to their own life-threatening flagellation. After minor skirmishing over press leaks and perquisites, Breeden declared war when he sued and fired me. Hostilities commenced in earnest with the first Telegraph sale-case in Delaware. Now we had moved to total war. The nuclear phase awaited.
I began at once to organize a counter-attack. I had to refinance Hollinger Inc. sufficiently to get it clear through the crisis and the call date on the Wachovia notes in March 2007, and establish a double firewall between those involved in the principal litigation and the voting rights in Hollinger International, so that Breeden’s lawyers would have much greater difficulty exploiting my tarnished reputation and claiming in every court they entered that anything was justified to protect the shareholders from me. This could be done by putting my Ravelston shares in the hands of respected trustees and having Hollinger Inc.’s control of Hollinger International also voted by an unimpeachable group of trustees.
I would engage Jefferies & Company and also Westwind Capital to proceed on the privatization of both companies and try to expose Breeden’s interference with the Strategic Process. He was responsible for Lazard’s denial of information to the bona fide prospective bidder I sent to them. Strine, the SEC, and the directors, especially now, after Breeden had put several of them over the side, all wanted a bid for Hollinger International. Certainly the shareholders did. I was under Strine’s injunction not to tamper with the Strategic Process; I was trying to make it work, and Breeden was preventing it from doing so.
I would exploit the lack of any judicial immunity for the report in Canada and launch a colossal libel suit against Breeden, Seitz, Savage, Paris, and Healy. From the notification by automatic email circulation of the whole appointments schedule of the New York office, I could trace Healy’s frequent lunches with the most venomous of our media enemies to bilious articles in the appropriate media outlet. Finally, there would be our try at SEC negotiations. These, I was assured, would have to begin in early October, after the staff of the commission had gone through the motions of reading and rejecting our Wells Notice reply.
Hollinger International had $800 million in cash and no debt except for a tax liability of $376 million that frightened everyone else, but Jack Boultbee and I were confident that little of it would actually have to be paid, given our tax planning. And the company had another $450 million of realizable assets without touching the core of the Chicago assets. We ought to be able to buy out all the shares except our own at a historically high and probably irresistible price. But we would have to make this offer to the shareholders in the teeth of Breeden’s knockout victory in the court of public opinion with the Special Committee report and of his efforts to bankrupt Hollinger Inc., and to generate a criminal prosecution. It was going to be stormy weather for quite a while.
Meanwhile we had to fight Breeden surrogates in Toronto, where shareholder Newton Glassman, the excitable and antagonistic former Cerberus employee who managed a fund named Catalyst, fancied himself the Tweedy Browne of Canada and had been loudly proclaiming for some time that he was going to throw a wrench in the Hollinger works. I have never met him, but from all accounts he is an intelligent but almost terminally bumptious personality. From his conduct with us, this second quality was obvious, but not the first.
He launched an oppression action, demanding an inspector be named by the court to look through all related-party transactions involving Hollinger Inc., Ravelston, and the principal owners. In Toronto, he had the good fortune to have his motion heard by Justice Colin Campbell of the Ontario Superior Court, a former medical-malpractice lawyer who was now inflicting himself on commercial matters. What Campbell lacked in Strine’s intelligence he replaced with obstinacy and similar weakness for the limelight. Together with the Ontario Securities Com mission, he would be the prime factor in destroying Hollinger Inc. Within a week of the Special Committee report, Campbell had agreed to the retaining of an inspector. This would be a plum bit of patronage. In his ruling, Campbell wrote that he “recognized the legitimate concern of the company that it not be subjected to an interfering, overly intrusive, long and costly process.” Campbell allowed the inspector and his team from Ernst & Young accountants to keep going for five years at a cost of $26 million to the shareholders in order to have them report not one cent or incidence of past wrongdoing. They were then appointed receiver of the bankruptcy to which they had so largely contributed and made a few more millions.
Our Hollinger Inc. directors were beginning to hyperventilate. Gordon Walker, timorous and repetitive but at this point not apparently lacking in goodwill, was concerned for his potential legal liability and was easily fussed on almost every subject. General Richard Rohmer is a more noteworthy character – author, lawyer, reserves general, and political roué. Unfortunately, it was Rohmer, whose conduct was in other respects honourable and constructive, who brought in Harvey Strosberg, a well-known former official of the Law Society of Ontario, as counsel to the independent directors, and chaos ensued. It soon became clear that we had the Breeden of the North in our midst. Strosberg saw himself as a ruthless and brilliant lawyer. He thought it an achievement to be known as something of a fixer and was always on the lookout for the next opportunity.
Strosberg careened quixotically about, blustering and bullying and then, as is his custom, falling silent when his plan collapsed around his ears and moving on to some new scheme like a pollinating bee. He agitated to have one of his protégés in the Law Society and a partner of his both named Hollinger Inc. directors. His duty was to represent and advise the independent directors effectively while maintaining as smooth a relationship as possible with the 78 per cent shareholder.
The status of the independent Hollinger Inc. directors (Walker and Rohmer) had evolved through the year. They had come on the board initially to approve the Barclay deal and had expected to leave again in a couple of months. Strine had emphasized the role of the independent directors and recommended discussions between the independent directors of both Hollingers. This played to the ambitions of Walker and Rohmer, who understandably didn’t want to seem to be anyone’s cat’s-paw. Rohmer even resorted to the Gaullist – and Caesarean – formula of referring to himself in the third person, and went those two one better by invoking his rank: “The General will not be moved.” It was often difficult to believe that any of it was happening.
More dangerous, Strine’s emphasis on the independent directors enflamed the ambitions of Strosberg. At the second Delaware appearance in July 2004, Strosberg announced to our delegation that Hollinger Inc. should be put into creditor protection, for reasons I never understood, as the company’s financial condition justified no such drastic step. Yet he was sworn to uphold the interests of the independent shareholders, as were his clients. The surest way to savage the equity interests of the shareholders was to enter any such arrangement.
Strosberg opened up another front in his war against me by claiming that Strine’s decision that I was jointly responsible for the Hollinger Inc. repayment to Hollinger International legally transferred some of Hollinger Inc.’s debt to me permanently. The money I was lending to Hollinger to pay disputed amounts yet to be adjudicated was now to become a permanent ex gratia infusion of cash by me to the company. This was an outrageous concept. Right after losing the original Glassman action, and after submitting legal bills for $915,000 for three uniformly unsuccessful months, Strosberg left for Italy, where I had visions of him lolling, in all his amplitude, on beaches and in posh cafés, advising his clients by telephone, as they huddled around the speaker phone in our boardroom, passing time in their daily day-long, hideously over-compensated meetings. They were an infestation and should have been the subject of corporate pest control, rather than the fawning of an addled judge.
JUST BEFORE THE BREEDEN REPORT was published, we received the Wells Notice from the SEC, informing us of the staff recommendation that I be charged with civil infractions of the Securities and Exchange Act. The SEC was eager to show its independence of Breeden, their former chairman, though, of course, they were in close and intimate contact with him. I felt that a trial – a civil one – would put me on a more equal footing than I had been on in the many months of preceding character assassination, with the steady peeling away of former friends and the complete absence of any sense of due process, presumption of innocence, or benefit of doubt. I was psychologically ready to face my accusers if I must and more confident of the outcome of a trial than of my ability to sustain Barbara’s and my own morale and credibility and possibly financial means, should the endless pounding of the Breeden persecution – with its echo chambers in the media and the lower courts of both countries – continue indefinitely.
I still doubted there would be a criminal charge, though that was obviously a possibility. Received wisdom was that my story, whose denouement had been joyously proclaimed in the media and at dinner tables for months now, was going to be satisfactorily resolved only by some horrible end, preferably in a prison cell, bankruptcy and divorce courts, and, if possible, a funeral home. (My possible suicide was a matter of public speculation.) I was too thoroughly defamed and thus too unsympathetic a figure to attract any underdog sentiment, or even, at this point, much credit for tenacity.
The whirlwind of abuse would subside eventually; Breeden’s ambition would be exposed, and I comforted myself with my belief that ultimately people respect those who bear adversity with some dignity, and it is respect untainted by the envy that conventional success attracts. Public and media opinion would move in tandem, and the impressionable denizens on the bench would be dragged behind them like clumps of seaweed on a ship’s propellers. Thus would justice unfold. It was a war of attrition. If I could survive, I would win, though I was aware that my hopes were based on frail armour and weapons protecting the fact that I was not guilty of any of the allegations. It was far from an idealized version of the rule of law, but I had to believe that I could still win.
Only when my dear Barbara, always prone to attacks of generic rabbinical pessimism, sadly whispered, “They’re going to take you away from me,” did I really fear a criminal trial. In general, despite the corruption of the American system, the pre-trial advantages to the prosecution, and a climate hostile to my version of capitalism which could portray any sense of individualism as licence and vanity and wanton self-indulgence, I still thought we would win because I knew, better than anyone, how unfounded Breeden’s whole onslaught was.
Disposing of Strosberg would be made somewhat easier by the retirement of Rohmer, his original champion. The general retired graciously in early August 2004. He is a substantial man and remains a friend. Don Vale and Paul Carroll – the first a very positive English business troubleshooter, the second a lawyer-businessman, who had been, and remained, Argus directors – moved up to the Hollinger Inc. board, which now had three independent directors. Carroll had squandered tens of millions of dollars of other people’s money in unwise ventures and had been branded by a Nova Scotia court as a “liar” in a famous financial case twenty-five years before. I did not know any of this when he was invited at the suggestion of a friend who could not accept himself but volunteered to get someone suitable. The proposer meant well but like many other well-intentioned people had no idea of the pressures and temptations that would soon engulf anyone who embarked on our financial group at this stage. Getting directors of any sort, let alone those of integrity and with proper qualifications for any company to which my name was linked, had become increasingly difficult. My attempts to recruit qualified directors were among the least rewarding chores of this very difficult time. This was a far and sorrowful cry from the days when Carrington and Kissinger had been directors of Hollinger International and Marie-Josée Kravis, when asked by me if she would like to be a director of the company, instantly replied, “I’d love to.”
Barbara and I went to Washington in the third week of August and interviewed some competing law firms as new civil counsel. In the end, we went with William Jeffress, one of the most respected trial lawyers in the United States, of the firm Baker Botts LLP. Breeden had been a partner in this firm, so Jeffress had to do a check to ensure that attacking Breeden would not occasion any difficulties with his partners. Breeden was not pleasantly remembered, and Jeffress was encouraged to “blow Breeden’s ass off” if that was what the client’s interest required. It did. Brendan Sullivan of Williams & Connolly was now criminal counsel, as well as co-securities counsel with John Warden of Sullivan & Cromwell (who graciously agreed to discount their bill after the fiasco in Delaware*). Jeffress would take over as civil counsel for the U.S. cases, including the Delaware appeal and the $1.25 billion Breeden racketeering lawsuit in Chicago (as it had become).
I had turned sixty on August 25, 2004. For my fiftieth birthday, there had been no significant celebration because we were in the middle of the price war in London and it would have been inappropriate. Needless to say, we were hardly in a state for much celebration now. This time we had a small gathering: George Jonas and his wife, Maya Cho, a splendidly brave blind Korean; Brian Stewart* and his wife, Tina; Ken Whyte and his wife, also Tina; as well as my children, Jonathan, Alana, and James, who were living with us in the Toronto house. It was a pleasant evening.
James went off to university a few days later, eighteen years old and six feet, five inches in height. I remembered leaving from the same house, forty-two years earlier, to go to university in Ottawa, and suddenly felt very old, though physically I felt as I had in 1962. In mid-September, my executive assistant of sixteen years, Rosemary Millar, succumbed to her lung cancer at the age of sixty-two. She had always seemed indestructible, a Thatcherite force of exquisite courtesy, correct formality, high intelligence, and splendid British humour. Her passing was not, at this point, a great surprise, nor probably an unmerciful development, but it was terribly hard to accept. She was a wonderful woman and one of the aspects of Britain I most enjoyed and relied on. Rosemary and I had emailed almost to the end. She had been appalled at the horrible press inflicted on me in Britain, and we sent each other encouragements up to a few days before she died. It was a great sorrow to think now that I would not be seeing her again. A few months later, Morton Berg, the psychoanalyst I had frequented many years before and whom I occasionally still consulted, died in Toronto. Their deaths added to a leaden cumulative sadness.
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BACK AT THE WITCHES’ COVEN now based at my 10 Toronto Street office, Gordon Walker, under the domination of the chief warlock, Harvey Strosberg, had decided that Jack Boultbee and David Radler, as well as Barbara and I, should be kicked out as Hollinger Inc. directors. Walker had already told the Globe and Mail that I should “move on.” I met with the three independent directors and faced Walker down. I said that I was prepared to entertain retirement to the private companies when Hollinger Inc. had been refinanced, the Damoclean sword of default had been removed, and my other objectives in response to the Special Committee report had been accomplished. Then, a wild card intruded. At this point in my career, such unbidden events were never positive.
Dixon Chant, an elderly partner of ours from the very first days of the Argus takeover out of which I had created Hollinger, died, leaving his eighty-five-year-old widow. His estate had Ravelston shares that we had agreed to buy in the event of his death, and Peter White, who had performed admirably as a replacement for Peter Atkinson, had, for the best of motives, transferred $1.1 million from Hollinger Inc. to Ravelston to buy in and cancel them, feeling it was more honourable to owe the money to one of the companies than to leave his widow waiting for it. (With all the court orders demanding payments and restricting our ability to sell our own shares, raising a million dollars in cash required a bit of time.) Peter’s action was ethically correct – but in the circumstances lethally inopportune. I had thought this money was coming from Ravelston itself. Jack Boultbee cautioned Peter in an email not to transfer the money without the approval of the Hollinger Inc. independent directors, but Peter didn’t see the email until after the cheque had been issued in early July. Radler and Barbara did not hear of it until many weeks later.
When Strosberg heard of the transfer at the end of August 2004, he squealed with delight, described it from his Italian watering place as “theft,” and urged a public statement and confidential confession to the Ontario Securities Commission of an “unauthorized payment.” He well knew the explosive and excessive nature of what he was counselling and, by now, the suggestibility of the judge involved. On September 24, Strosberg, now conveyed back from Italy, attended upon the inevitable Justice Colin Campbell in chambers together with Glassman’s counsel and revealed the $1.1 million transfer in the most tendentious terms possible.
Our directors met on September 27. Unaware of Strosberg’s and Walker’s stab into what was now the crowded pincushion-dartboard between my shoulder blades, on the preceding business day, I put through my whole program: the election of two new independent directors; the terms of the refinancing; the proclamation of my firewall plan to re-empower Hollinger Inc. as a Hollinger International shareholder; the engagement of Jefferies & Company and Westwind Capital to explore privatization of both the U.S. and Canadian companies; the disbandment of the litigation committee because the independent directors were now half the directors; and the end of Strosberg’s retainer. I felt that we had accomplished this fine surgical stroke in time. So we had, but on a tighter basis than I had any reason to believe. In the middle of the September 27 meeting, a message was delivered to the boardroom stating that Glassman had launched a new action seeking to remove all the Ravelston directors from the board. I mistakenly assumed that Glassman was not acting on the basis of any new facts and that he had overreached. We had agreed to repay the $1.1 million. The court intervention of the previous Friday was not mentioned.
The two new directors, Alan Wakefield and Robert Metcalfe, were recruited by Peter White. Alan was an unemployed technology executive with whom I had gone to boarding school forty-four years before. I told him it was “a long time between conversations.” Robert Metcalfe was a non-practising lawyer and former head of the Sifton family’s holding company, Armadale. Both men were well intentioned but not temperamentally well equipped for the rough-and-tumble world they were entering.
On the evening of Monday, September 27, I was walking in Central Park, closing in on the bench Mayor Bloomberg had donated in the name of Barbara and me, when Barbara called my cellphone and told me there was an urgent message. Thus did I learn of Strosberg’s outrage. He was in open collaboration with Glassman to eject us from our company and had reported us to the judge. Don Vale called me back when he came in from dinner and assured me that Strosberg had no such mandate from the independent directors to go to court as Walker had claimed and Strosberg had done. The next day Vale wrote up a comprehensive affidavit, with fellow independent Paul Carroll’s support, debunking the Strosberg-Walker version, which had been featured in the Globe and Mail after they had interviewed Walker speaking eagerly from France.
We proceeded satisfactorily through the week. We completed and announced the refinancing of Hollinger Inc. on Thursday, October 1, and my Can$1.1 billion libel suit, the largest in Canadian history, on Friday. With a knife at my throat, I worked urgently to turn the crisis to advantage. Over the ensuing weekend, I worked out a plan to sell some corporate real estate we had been discussing as a replacement for my Toronto home as the subject of a mortgage, and to privatize Hollinger Inc. This would slam the door on Breeden, Glassman, and Walker.
The enemy’s battle now was to have Campbell pitch Boultbee, Barbara, Radler, and me off the board of Inc., based on our role as Ravelston directors in Peter White’s payment to the Chant estate. (The fact that Barbara was never a Ravelston director nor shareholder was irrelevant. The Special Committee report had labelled her as one and that was The Word.) Walker and Strosberg, in their affidavits and depositions, alleged that the $1.1 million transfer through Ravelston to Dick Chant’s estate had been a straight act of oppression of the shareholders and even theft. Strosberg prattled on for one hundred pages of transcript about how I had objected to his invoices, now totalling more than a million dollars for less than four months of advice.
The deposition was classic Strosberg. The US$15 million I had advanced the company pursuant to Strine’s order in July was represented by Strosberg in his deposition as a manifestation of my blundering in signing the Restructuring Agreement in November 2003 (which did not commit Hollinger Inc. to repay anything). He claimed that the debt had effectively been transferred from the company to me by Strine’s order. Strosberg’s was a false opinion that was contradicted by an opinion I had obtained from Sullivan & Cromwell at Strosberg’s request. This Strosberg version crept into Walker’s affidavit and Kelly’s comments, and constituted the attempted legitimization of outright theft from me by a company of which I was the ultimate majority shareholder.
Walker was now just as dangerous, as he appeared to be speaking as much in disarming sorrow as in anger. He gave some credit to Peter White and to me, but required that we be judicially dismissed from the board, White not so much for the $1.1 million mistake as for his association with me, notorious pickpocket of the defenceless shareholders. This version was being endlessly retailed in the press. And because judges tend to read the press with the attentiveness (and, in the case of some, the approximate intelligence) of bloodhounds on the trail, there was a general feeling among counsel that we were all at risk. All my opponents needed to do was bandy my name about, like Chamberlain flourishing his signed agreement with Hitler after Munich in 1938, to achieve their ends. My American counsel feared a “Strine-of-the-North” excoriation in Canada that would resonate very badly in the endless and countless American legal battles, and advised me to resign before it happened. It was at this point that George Jonas referred to American and Canadian judges as “the Zeitgeist in robes.”
In his affidavit, Walker also gave the impression that the independent directors, under Strosberg’s guidance, met constantly by telephone through September, consistently celebrating the fact that they were “steeled” and “irrevocable” in this view that I had to go as chairman and as a director, which I learned only from the newspapers, taking all the Ravelston representatives with me. Once they were in my presence, which was not infrequently, none of them, not even Walker, could find voice for their grievances, unfounded as they were. These prolonged daily meetings were the method by which they ran up their $100,000 individual monthly fees. (According to loyal sources within 10 Toronto Street, these directors’ fees were helping the Canadian economy, if not the Hollinger Inc. shareholders: expensive new cars and even condominiums were now being acquired with them.) It was during this time that Glassman and Walker together were promiscuously soliciting new directors. For weeks at dinners around Toronto, people had regaled their dining companions that they were about to become Hollinger directors on the Glassman slate. It was, like so much else, very irritating.
OUR LEGAL FORTUNES WERE briefly uplifted by a Chicago Federal Court judge, who threw out the civil RICO charge on October 8, 2004, and dismissed the rest of the Hollinger International claim without prejudice. The opposition lawyer, the mouthy and cynical Jonathan Rosenberg, co-author of the Special Committee report, was, from all accounts, thunderstruck by the decision. In order to reject civil RICO charges, the judge must consider even if all the underlying allegations are true that other civil statutes adequately provided for them. This was a high hurdle, but under the excellent advocacy of Barbara’s lawyer Greg Joseph, who was recruited by John Warden, the judge arrived at that conclusion. Thus vanished the uniquely American absurdity of the civil offense of habitual criminality.
On the heels of this RICO victory, the opposition went back to their faithful Strine, asking for an extension of the injunction against my tampering with the Lazard Strategic Process. This was a bit rich, as I was trying to make that process function and they were trying to shut it down. Breeden wanted to keep his million-dollar-a-week gravy train going (about 10 per cent of that to him personally) which would be impossible if Hollinger International were to stop action against us. He also knew that whatever hopes he had of producing criminal charges would shrink if there were a takeout of all the shareholders. What had begun as a routine corporate putsch had clearly become a fight to the financial and reputational finish involving billions of dollars in claimed damages.
The hypocrisy of seeking an extension of an injunction against my engaging in nefarious activities that he was in fact conducting and I was opposing was not completely undetected, even by Strine. He blasted Hollinger International counsel and suggested that the parties try to reach a compromise, apparently unmindful that he had done more than anyone except Breeden to ensure that this couldn’t happen, by loading the dice for my enemies.
When Strosberg was dismissed, we arranged for the well-regarded but very cautious David Roebuck to replace him as counsel to the independent directors. This would have introduced a lawyer of unquestioned stature and integrity. Unfortunately, Roebuck fumbled around for five critical days before concluding that he had irremediable conflicts (which he later overcame). He proposed Toronto lawyer Tony Kelly as his replacement, and the directors hired him, practically sight unseen. He quickly fell in with the Walker-Strosberg line of running out the clock on privatization. The bondholders had given me an extension on the Inc. notes until March 31, 2005, to make the privatization offer, and the simplest way of killing my attempt would be to have me miss the deadline.
I called an emergency meeting of the Inc. directors to sort out our legal position opposite International in accordance with Strine’s instructions for the two sides to negotiate. Our legal position was quickly revealed as schizo phrenic. Kelly took the position that he had sole carriage of any legal issues involving Hollinger Inc., as if Inc.’s own legal firm of Fogler Rubinoff in Toronto did not exist. I asked Inc.’s Chicago counsel to prepare settlement terms for International in concert with John Warden. Chicago counsel replied that he had instructions from Walker and Kelly to require minimal concessions from International. Notwithstanding, I managed to construct a list of requirements from International that included getting the proceeds owed to Inc. from the Telegraph sale; the implementation of the co-operation and confidentiality agreement between International and Inc. and we asked for the reactivation of the Lazard restructuring process for bona fide prospective investors whom we sent to Lazard.
The Hollinger Inc. directors ignored Walker’s snuffling and approved these terms. All were accepted by Hollinger International on October 21, 2004, except the reopening of the Lazard process, which Breeden was determined to keep closed, despite seeking an extension of the requirement that I not obstruct it.
This agreement was approved by the court. Strine was away for the weekend, so Warden had to deal with the juvenile farce of Hollinger International’s counsel asking for assurance that I would not violate the injunction between midnight on October 31 and the opening of business hours the following day, when Strine would be back to endorse the agreement.
Unfortunately, Strine returned to his usual form over the reopening of the Lazard process and dismissed our request with a flippancy about how he would consider it if we had an offer for a billion dollars for the Sun-Times that Breeden’s robots were not taking seriously. However, the international financial press did cartwheels of astonishment at what they portrayed as my triumph. Laura Jereski snapped that this was “Conrad’s greatest victory.” (I have been impressed throughout that these people refer to me with such familiarity, even Breeden, as if I were a likeable scoundrel.)
We presented the privatization package to the Hollinger Inc. directors on October 26, adjourned the meeting to October 28, and gave Catalyst the two days’ notice our interim agreement required of any material related-party transaction. Catalyst predictably responded with injunctive action, describing privatization as a “stratagem.”
If we could survive the Glassman imposture as a regular shareholder and investor (he was a holder of shares convertible into Hollinger International shares and so was not really a Hollinger Inc. shareholder at all), we should be able to force recognition of the right of the shareholders to an offer we wished to make and they wished to accept. It was preposterous that a court would take seriously the antics of Glassman, someone claiming to emancipate the shareholders whom he was himself disadvantaging. But so perverse was the climate that the Catalyst effort was a deadly threat. Having navigated through to the beginnings of a legal turn and being within sight of a safe financial port, I was in danger of being driven from my principal remaining redoubt by the manipulation of an unworldly and credulous judiciary, with the help of the extravagant pests to whom the court had delivered a great public company for safekeeping.
Because Breeden’s entourage had some of his insouciant arrogance, Hollinger International passed a great deal of information along an Internet channel they shared with us, but which we, for obvious reasons, scarcely used. They also continued to send us, as in olden times, the weekly appointment schedule of everyone in the New York office.
Thus, from looking at the Internet site, we had all the accumulated costs of the Special Committee, including the nearly $7 million that Breeden had taken for himself in fees.
In the arguments before Campbell, the judge regularly became flushed, rude, and aggressive with my counsel, Alan Mark. We concluded that Campbell’s rudeness was based on his having bought into the line that I was a corporate governance delinquent and he lacked the judicial temperament necessary to extend normal courtesies to the legal counsel for such an abominable client. Hollinger Inc. lawyer Avi Greenspoon participated importantly on the call that determined the fate of the Glassman injunction against privatization on the evening of October 27. He completely but courteously demolished the spurious arguments of Glassman’s lawyer. The judge ruled that the process of privatization must be allowed to proceed.
Later that evening at a reception, Justice Campbell explained to Jack Boultbee’s lawyer that he sought a “win-win” outcome, meaning that he wanted the shareholders to get the benefit of any privatization offer but that he also wanted to support proper corporate governance by installing and maintaining the inspector. In another pattern with which I would become distressingly familiar, the judge had not thought it through. He had not weighed the balance between the inspection process he had unleashed, on the one hand, and the requirements to complete the facility from the noteholders, which had to be acted upon by March 31, 2005, on the other.
In his “win-win” world, condensed into his Warholesque fifteen minutes of fame, as the international financial press watched and attended his courtroom, Campbell thought he could conduct a comprehensive inspection of the company, thus inciting the expectations of the enemies of the shareholders who wished to stop the privatization, while at the same time espousing the privatization.
Privatization of Hollinger Inc. was approved by the directors on October 28, 2004. The relatively solid Robert Metcalfe was made chairman of the privatization committee; Wakefield and Walker were the other members. The hearing on the composition of the board was on November 2 and 3. In order to run no risk of being thrown out, I retired that morning (November 2), as Alan Mark informed the court. I emphasized in my press release that I was doing so to facilitate the privatization of the company.
After an inexcusable three weeks of deliberation, on November 18, Campbell rendered his decision. Alan Mark was successful in his argument that Glassman had no standing and that his interests diverged from those of the common shareholders. Peter White was exonerated of anything but an innocent error and retained. However, incomprehensibly, Campbell ruled that although Barbara and Radler knew nothing of the $1.1 million transfer and Boultbee had warned White against it, an oppression remedy was justified. So, he removed all three from the board.
What ensued was the predictable attempted putsch by Walker. He arrived, very crisply turned out in a new suit, in Peter White’s office on the morning of Friday, November 19, and announced to White that he wished to be chairman of Hollinger and asked White to nominate him. White declined and said that the company should not have a chairman, that it was in a transitional phase toward privatization, and that there should be chairmen of meetings only, rotating alphabetically.
Walker smugly stated that he would be elected chairman anyway and left. A series of acrimonious and comical meetings occurred at Walker’s office, involving all the directors apart from Peter White. The five were constantly forming and breaking alliances and were unable to agree on a chairman. When they were not in informal session, they were no less cranky and conspiratorial. Our sources kept us well informed of their antics.
On the second full day of fruitless and febrile discussion, Walker went off the walls and distributed a paper threatening to go to the inspector (Ernst & Young, who were looking at related-party transactions and had nothing to do with this sort of issue) and the judge directly, as well as to the Ontario Securities Commission and the SEC (which had no jurisdiction) with the complaint that some remaining directors were not independent of Peter White and me. In his paper, Walker modestly described himself as a “perfect chairman” and “superb consensus-gatherer.”
Walker had thrown down the mask the day before and said that privatization would not happen. He revealed that he considered that I was, in effect, a crook, that Ravelston was a corrupt influence, and that this board had a mandate and duty to crush the 78 per cent shareholder and take over the company in whatever direction pleased it. He ignored the fact that was mentioned by several of his colleagues, namely that virtually all the shareholders wanted the company privatized. His judgment of almost everything was warped by his indecent ambitions.
Westwind Capital lined up the Toronto-Dominion Bank and several other large shareholders to commit to or vocally support our privatization offer. We had nearly 40 per cent of the minority in hand before the new board structure was agreed. Walker and Strosberg were starting to look like the East German satellite regime that declared in 1953 that it had “lost confidence in the people.”
WE HAD ALSO COME INTO the season of the books and film and television programs about my rise and much-applauded fall. The inevitable Richard Siklos, not the most obnoxious of journalists but no prize winner for quality of research or objectivity either, subtitled his quickie rehash of his earlier Shades of Black as The Rise and Fall of Conrad Black. From my brief scan of it, it appeared to be a cataract of low gossip and clumsy gropings toward pretended insight.
Jacquie McNish and her co-author, Sinclair Stewart, obsessed with what they took as a morality play in which the corporate governance forces of righteousness prevailed over my chronic wrongdoing, appended to the title of their book, Wrong Way, the elaboration The Fall of Conrad Black, as if I had managed this feat without ever having risen. I read about ten pages of Siklos and not a word of McNish.
George Toombs, a pedestrian writer, wrote a reasonably fair biography, concluding with a prediction from Donald Trump that I would certainly rise again. He clung to me, rather “creepily,” as my daughter put it, more than two years later in Chicago and then rushed out an inelegant hatchet job as a sequel to his initial effort. He gloated that I had bought him a drink in Chicago. Of such trivia are some people’s lives made.
Stretching for the metaphysical, Toronto Life magazine prominently ran a piece welcoming Barbara and me to Hell. Eddie Greenspan sued and alleged that my Catholic faith made this charge unimaginably abhorrent. In the legal correspondence, he represented me as virtually a holy martyr but extracted an abject apology that, in his version, carried pietistic claims to amusing extremes.
Debbie Melnyk, an engaging and obscure filmmaker, had been following me around with a cameraman for years before the serious problems became publicly visible. Her timely film was telecast in Britain and Canada. I did not watch it but understand that it was not com-pletely unbalanced and that Melnyk evinced some liking of me.
The celebration of my problems gradually settled down to sporadic outbursts of group media self-reassurance that I really was finished. In general, the press ceased its comparison of Hollinger with Enron or WorldCom and they stopped putting me in the same clause with Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco and other criminal defendants. A mantra of the “disgraced,” “fallen,” or “ousted” Conrad Black was endlessly repeated. I pointed out in a letter to the Sunday Telegraph that when I had been responsible for the contents of that newspaper, it knew the difference between disgraced and defamed.
I enjoyed writing the odd letter for publication. It gave me some satisfaction, however evanescent. When Alexander Chancellor wrote in the Observer that I was the greatest embarrassment of the House of Lords, I replied that he had been such an embarrassment to the Sunday Telegraph that the editor fired him as editor of that newspaper’s magazine after three issues. When Roger Ebert, the well-known, overpaid movie critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, purported to agree with the paper’s unionized employees threatening to strike, I wrote to that newspaper and the Tribune, which eagerly published it, forcing the Sun-Times to do the same, that his constant threats to quit his “beloved Sun-Times,” his $500,000 annual salary and hundreds of thousands of dollars of options, and his website operated at the newspaper’s (considerable) expense made his “proletarian posturings” rather implausible. We had a rematch, but it didn’t make Ebert appear any more believable.
The mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, when taxed by a journalist with the embarrassment of a municipal official who had allegedly embezzled funds, referred to David Radler and me as illustrative of how people are surprisingly dishonest. I wrote him a polite but forceful note, which the Sun-Times published but which elicited no response from His Honor, whom we had always supported and assisted in any way possible. (After eighty years of the Democrats in power in Chicago and its environs, the system could not and does not fail to be a corrupt regime. Daley, finally unpopular, retired in 2010.)
These were mere pinpricks, of course, in a massive wall of orchestrated press animosity, but I hoped they showed I was still alive and that my (sparsely attended) corporate funeral had not yet taken place.
ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2004, I heard worrisome rumours of an impending SEC action against us. The SEC, contrary to their usual policy of reasonable discretion, leaked accurate summaries of their action to the Wall Street Journal and the Globe and Mail, which published them November 15 before we received any formal notice of what was afoot. The practice had been for the SEC to reply to the so-called Wells Notice response and then, if the subjects wished, to attempt settlement discussions before charges were laid. An SEC official explained to one of my counsel that this practice was changed in the last year implicitly because of the intense competition to be seen as leading the crusade against corporate licence, greed, or merely, as in my own case, inopportune events. The SEC charges came down on November 15, 2004.
While the sequence was unwelcome, the SEC charges themselves were relatively soft. They wanted us to abandon our appeals to recover the so-called “not properly authorized payments” and demanded an additional $40 million of returned non-competition payments. They had no case for this second provision. They also wanted to ban for life Radler’s or my association with a public company and to levy an unspecified fine. (By this time, no one could now pay me enough to be a director of an American public company.) The SEC had discarded 90 per cent of Breeden’s Special Committee report, and their spokespersons told my counsel and the press that they would be happy to begin settlement discussions at any time. The claim itself was as modest as we could have hoped in these dismal circumstances and was generally not overplayed by the media.
In an inspired moment, Paul Colucci of Westwind Capital suggested that on that very day we make known our anticipated offer price of $7.25 for the Hollinger Inc. shares, which had been trading at just above $3 a week before our privatization announcement. This was a brilliant method of putting additional momentum behind the privatization move and also of sending the message that we took the SEC in our stride and that it was business as usual. Financial community and press comments were favourable, and the stock rose about a dollar, to $6.90.
We had a public relations success when Hollinger International was required by SEC disclosure rules to acknowledge that Breeden’s inquisition had cost $57 million and that they had underestimated its third-quarter cost by $14 million. Even at this revelation, and after a fairly acidulous press release that I had a hand in composing, the institutional shareholders did not rise up. Now the Special Committee was costing more than $1 million a week, and its declared intention was to go on for another two years. Though RICO had been thrown out and the usurpers were unable to deny us our share of the Telegraph proceeds, the Tweedy Brownes and Gordon Walkers plodded forward in agreement with Breeden.
IT WAS A GREAT COMFORT to conduct this phase of the battle from my house in Toronto. Barbara and I walked (holding hands, as the Globe and Mail breathlessly reported) in the late afternoons along the street my father had created fifty years before when he developed the neighbourhood now known as the Bridle Path. I had carefully assembled and placed twenty thousand books in the libraries and there remained important traces of the original house where I was brought up. The long-serving staff were thoughtful and unobtrusive, and the swimming pool and chapel I had built were great sources of exercise and refreshment of body and spirit.
The chapel, containing my memorabilia of John Henry Cardinal Newman, my friends Cardinal Emmett Carter and Cardinal Paul-Émile Léger, together with some religious artifacts I had collected over thirty years, had a small attached reading room and theological library. It provided a serene end to even the most tumultuous days. This was especially true in the autumn, when I sometimes stayed up so late I could see, often only a few feet away, deer lured up out of the ravine by the delicious apples of our orchard.
I had some comforting sense of fighting for my parents and descendants as well as my wife and myself, and for certain principles. Surrounded with the discreet love and friendship of family, I felt like the home team in a struggle against a numerous and loathsome enemy.
It was heartening when Robert Kent, the assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago, who had carriage of the Hollinger matter, assured attorney Greg Craig, an associate of Brendan Sullivan at Williams & Connolly, that I was not a target of a criminal investigation. Even Eddie Greenspan concluded that a charge of criminal activity was unlikely.
We were convened at the November 30 meeting of the Hollinger International directors to approve implementation of a series of guidelines of the New York Stock Exchange, including enthroning “whistleblowers” and setting up a toll-free number for anonymous telephone complaints about management to the chairman of the Audit Committee, that Lincolnian pillar of corporate disinterestedness, Jim Thompson. It was a regime of squealing, denunciation, and presumption of guilt. There was a scent of Maoism about the proceedings, something of the village committee and their kangaroo self-criticism sessions with a local leader present to report to a regional leader to report to some sub-committee or other of the central committee.
One of the NYSE guidelines required the appointment of a chairman of the non-management directors, who were to meet at least once a year. Thompson and Burt put forward Seitz. I commended them both on their forbearance in promoting the candidacy of one of the co-authors of the Special Committee report, which had denounced Thompson and Burt as grossly negligent and incompetent. Thompson and Burt were like dogs licking the hand of the vivisectionist as he sharpens his knife in his operating room, their tails debouching from between their legs only to wag contraintuitively to appease the author of their impending fate.
Barbara and I voted against Seitz as the new chairman, and so did Richard Perle, disillusioned with his failed dalliance with those trying to destroy him. Barbara added that she did not consider the majority on this board capable of ensuring the honest governance of the company and did not think they should be entrusted with it. That judgment was certainly proved accurate.
It was hard to believe that our fine company, meeting in the same place and with most of the same personalities, could have been reduced by Breeden and those whom he intimidated or suborned to such a degraded mockery of a corporation. As I listened on the telephone to these people dispose of our company, I placed my hopes in privatizing what remained and in so doing salvaging something for the other shareholders and myself.
The privatization of the American company, Hollinger International, was begun in the first week of December 2004 as the investment proposal document was finalized and circulated to possible investors. It had commercial merit, and I was reasonably hopeful it would succeed. Canadian privatization continued to gain strength; American privatization had made a promising start. Though almost every hand had been turned against me, I thought I could finally see a gleam of hope. Such a hope, in such a time, was an invitation to disappointment.
*This became the official News Corporation version: The Times couldn’t catch the Telegraph’s circulation but drove me to theft from my own company to maintain a cash flow adequate to sustain Barbara’s profligate lifestyle. Not one additional cent was extracted from the Telegraph, and its profits were at all-time highs on the heels of its price war victory when the controversial payments, from huge North American asset sales, occurred.
* Especially Paris, who had vouched for the presentability of our accounts when assisting in our corporate bond issues in the five preceding years.
* I would be remiss not to emphasize that though their efforts were not overly successful, both John Warden and Ben Stapleton are excellent lawyers and delightful gentlemen.
* Brian Stewart, the senior network news commentator of CBC Television for many years, could have been mentioned on almost any page of this book, as we have been close friends since we fetched up together in the same high school in 1960, both at tangled academic moments. We often travelled together, in Canada, the U.S., and many parts of Europe and Africa, on university holidays and after. No one could ask a truer, more constant, more amiable, intelligent, and even-tempered friend. Apart from some different historical perspectives (and not many of those), especially over what I consider his unjust disparagement of the military command talents of General Douglas MacArthur, there has not been an impatient word between us since he considered me, with some reason, an unruly sub-tenant of his in Twickenham, England, in 1966. We have been much involved with each other’s lives, including many of their most intense moments, from our teens to our officially designated “golden years,” including those recorded here.
His friendship has been an inexpressible pleasure and consolation for many decades.