Malcolm Parry of Vancouver Sun
puts the spotlight on business mogul
Jim Pattison who will be 79 on October 1.
VANCOUVER, Canada (Vancouver Sun), September 20, 2007:
GETTING STARTED: City-based mogul Jim Pattison's 29,000 employees handle $6.3-billion-worth of sales yearly from 400 locations in 11 countries. There are 28 radio stations, three TV broadcasters, 750 fishing vessels, 90,000 billboards, and 13,500 new vehicles leased annually. With volume like that happening, you'd think a hot shot on the make -- like the Jim Pattison of 60 years ago, say -- would have sweet-talked the boss into trading his four-year-old Cadillac DTS four-door sedan for a 79th-birthday gift to himself October 1.
That would be an easier sell if General Motors' premium division still produced the convertibles and two-door hardtops Pattison favours. But there were few full-load Caddies in Pattison's future when he was 41 and visions of sugarplums danced in his head. The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce turned that glittering Christmas Eve picture into "the dark days."
Bankers visit Pattison's 18th-floor, Cordova-at-Thurlow office regularly nowadays. A BMO Bank of Montreal squad was there Monday. Below them as they smiled, the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre expansion ate up extra millions, and Pattison's 150-foot yacht Nova Spirit lay placidly at its nearby dock after having Oprah Winfrey as a week-long guest recently.
There had been no such smiles "at 10 to six, Dec. 23, 1969," Pattison recalled. That's when, "with no inkling whatsoever," word came from Toronto's 25 King St. main branch that the CIBC had called in $73 million worth of personal and corporate loans as Pattison pursued an unfriendly takeover of Maple Leaf Mills.
"For three years, we were really out of business," Pattison said. "We were alive, but that was it."
Alive enough, it appears for Toronto Dominion Bank president (later chair) Dick Thompson and credit chief Ted MacDowell to okay a $2-million loan "to pay the payroll, save our company and help us build it again. I am forever in the debt of the TD Bank."
Pattison had a track record then, at least. That was hardly the case 10 years earlier, even though the TD Bank had loaned him $300 in 1950 to buy and resell railway ties.
From a desk side drawer Monday, Pattison produced a financial statement showing that Jim Pattison Ltd. began business May 7, 1961. General Motors had guaranteed $190,000 worth of credit, and the Royal Bank's Broadway-at-Cambie branch was on the hook for $40,000.
Recent official photo from the Group site
That hook took months for the bank to swallow, partly because manager Harold Nelson's loan limit was $5,000 and the bank's B.C. head, Tom Whitley, didn't know Jim Pattison from Jim Beam. Credit was also a lot harder to get a half-century ago. But, with GM insisting he produce the dough or no deal, Pattison got Nelson to try and try again.
"They'd figured it out on paper," Pattison said. "But, in this world, everything is people."
Finally, he scored a meeting with Whitley, told him he was married, had three children had worked steadily at the Bow-Mac auto dealership for 10 years, "and wasn't a job-jumper." Two days later, "Whitley approved it."
Pattison strung up some fluttering pennants and began selling cars -- 25 of them in the first month. He also scored a $13,956.40 deficit. "I'd lost a third of my $40,000," he said. "I thought that was the end."
Happily, the year-end showed a different story. Pattison was $29,922.72 to the good by then, and embarked on a process that would see him buy 240 companies, sell 60, start 54, liquidate 33, complete 33 joint-ventures and partnerships and arrange "five significant amalgamations."
The story has a sentimental conclusion. When then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented Pattison with the rags-to-riches Horatio Alger Award in 2005, the recipient flew retired 91-year-old Nelson to the Washington ceremony and said: "This is the guy who made it all possible."
In like vein, although his firms sell all manner of vehicles, "I drive a GM car because they started me in business, and I have a great debt to them." As for almost putting him out of business, does he still deal with the CIBC?
"Sure, I do," Pattison said, laughing. "Sure."
Awarded OBC - Order of British Columbia - 1990 Horatio Alger winners are bound to espouse hard work, perseverance and honesty. Pattison's corporate slogan, Partners In Pride, stresses the core values of integrity, quality and customer satisfaction. Like most high-achievers, he is able to remember and benefit from setbacks, not dwell on them.
Maybe the closest he came was in 1971, when he looked long through his window, then called still-with-him sidekick Maureen Chant and said: "Ten years in business, and my net worth is now minus $2 million."
However, "I never felt depressed. Ever. I can only remember figuring out how to get through the problem and build things up again."
Asked how many companies he plans to add to the 300-plus he's bought, started or amalgamated, near-octogenarian Pattison replied: "Hopefully, a lot. We're just getting started, Malcolm."
By Malcolm Parry
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
