The Dark Prince of Bay Street | Brookfield

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In 1978, a South African accountant orchestrated one of the most audacious and ruthless hostile takeovers in the history of Canadian business.

His name was Jack Cockwell. And over the next decade, he would build a corporate empire unlike anything Canada had ever seen.

This is the third episode in our series examining the history of Brookfield. In our first two episodes, we traced the company’s lineage through Brazilian Traction, the neo-colonial monopoly that dominated South America, and through the Bronfmans, the bootlegging dynasty that supplied liquor to American gangsters during Prohibition.

But those were just the origin stories. This episode is about what happened when those two worlds collided.

Edper-Brascan controlled over 500 companies. The beer you drank, the team you watched, the mall you shopped at, the house you lived in — all of it could be traced back to this sprawling conglomerate. At its height, it was worth more than $120 billion.

All of this was Jack Cockwell’s domain. Immigrant, corporate philosopher, ruthless operator, Cockwell single-handedly imposed his will on Canada’s business establishment and dominated the 1980s like no one else.

But by the end of the decade, people on Bay Street began to whisper.

Something was rotten at the heart of Cockwell’s empire. They said that the whole thing was a mirage. A lie. A house of card waiting to fall over.

They all turned out to be right.

To learn more:

The Brass Ring: Power, Influence and the Brascan Empire by Patricia Best & Ann Shortell

Edper by Keith Dalrymple

“The Edper Puzzle” by Kimberly Noble in The Globe and Mail

“The Second Coming” by Rod McQueen in The Financial Post

“Fears for a Leveraged Leviathan” by Clyde Farnsworth in The New York Times

“He was a titan of Bay Street and a senator. But J. Trevor Eyton died owing millions in taxes and on the verge of bankruptcy” by David Bruser & Jesse McLean in The Toronto Star

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