Tycoon, philanthropist ‘ had a huge heart’
ENTREPRENEUR BUILT A FAMILY DYNASTY
Samuel Belzberg was a corporate raider of the 1980s who perfected the practice known as greenmail to build one of Canada’s foremost family dynasties, all while becoming one of the country’s leading philanthropists.
Belzberg died March 30 in Vancouver after a massive stroke. The 89- year- old was at work when he collapsed and was rushed to hospital.
“He was at his desk, just like he would have wanted,” said his daughter, Wendy Belzberg.
Samuel Belzberg was born in Calgary on June 26, 1928. His father, Abraham, had been a fishmonger in Poland when he emigrated to Canada in 1919 and started a furniture business. Samuel’s mother, the former Hinda Fishman, had also emigrated from Poland. They had three sons (Samuel was the middle one) and two daughters, Fanny and Lil.
“Mom and Dad lost so many of their brothers and sisters” in the Holocaust, he told the Vancouver Sun in 2003. “Yet Canada took them in. This country takes people in, so why shouldn’t we help people? It’s our responsibility to help. I think about it every day.”
Belzberg was widely known for his philanthropy devoted to Jewish causes, among them the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. He put up the initial $ 500,000 to start the centre in 1977 and was the founding chairman. Since then, it has grown into an influential, non- governmental organization dealing with issues of racism, prosecution of Nazi war criminals, Middle Eastern affairs, extremist groups and hate on the internet.
“Sam was both a visionary and proud Jew,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, who founded the centre.
Internationally, Belzberg will be remembered primarily as a getout- of- my- way entrepreneur who rose from the prairie to the pinnacle of the corporate world.
Starting out by selling used cars in Alberta in the 1940s, he went on to join his brothers, Hyman and Michael, in 1963 in founding what became First City Financial, a financial services giant and holding company, originally based in Vancouver, used by the family for high-profile corporate takeovers.
Belzberg first attracted atten- tion outside of Canadian business circles in 1979, when he amassed shares of the Bache Group, at the time one of the largest retail brokerage companies in the United States. Bache was vulnerable, having been squeezed by a silver-market gamble, but its managers bitterly fought the Belzbergs’ demands for board seats.
In the end, Bache took refuge in the arms of Prudential Insurance, selling itself to Prudential in a deal that made the Belzbergs roughly US$83 million in today’s money.
Seizing on the junk bond boom and sometimes teaming up with U. S. raiders like T. Boone Pickens, the Belzberg brothers — with Sam running the show — became known as green-mailers. The term refers to investors who accumulate stock in a company, threaten a takeover and then drop the threat after the company agrees to buy back the shares at a premium.
Belzberg rejected that characterization as unfair. In an interview in 1986, when First City’s assets were worth roughly $18 billion in today’s money, he said he had never set out to sell stock back at a premium.
“We have business plans when we buy into something,” he said, adding that he sold back shares only when companies refused to listen to his strategic advice. “I don’t understand why managements that pay the greenmail aren’t criticized,” he said.
Belzberg said he was simply a merchant banker — by his definition, an investor “who takes advantage of situations and opportunities.”
Samuel Belzberg was the only son to graduate from college, studying business at the University of Alberta.
He married Frances Cooper, a model and aspiring actress living in Los Angeles whose parents had come from the same small town in Poland as his. When he was 21, his father drove him to Los Angeles to meet her. She survives him.
Belzberg’s rise in the corporate world was interrupted when he surrendered day-to-day control of First City in 1991. The company had taken huge losses on its securities portfolio and been bruised by a failed takeover attempt of Armstrong World Industries, a Pennsylvania floor- covering and ceiling-board company.
The fight, which coincided with the 1989 collapse of the junk-bond market, made it harder for the Belzbergs to find takeover financing. The raider era had ended.
It was then that Belzberg, in his early 60s, started a second act as a private- equity investor, ultimately building a new company in Vancouver, Gibralt Capital, into a powerhouse real estate and capital investment firm that operates throughout North America. Successful manoeuvres included the buyout and turnaround of Keg Restaurants; the financing of ID Biomedical, a manufacturer of vaccines based in Quebec City; and huge real estate projects in Nova Scotia, California and Oregon.
Meanwhile, in Vancouver, he headed the initial $ 13.5- million campaign to aid Simon Fraser University’s downtown satellite campus. After donating $1 million himself, he gracefully thanked late SFU chancellor Jack Diamond “for picking me to have this opportunity.” The Samuel & Frances Belzberg Atrium at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue is named after him and his wife, Frances.
SFU president Andrew Petter said Belzberg’s legacy will live on at the university.
“Sam was a larger-than-life figure,” he said. "He was one of the builders of SFU.
“He had a huge heart and a huge belief in education and the power of education,” said Petter. “He had an ongoing interest in the university and how it was supporting young people and their futures.”
Belzberg was also the founder of the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation. He set up the charity after one of his children developed the neurological movement disorder characterized by involuntary muscle contractions.
Belzberg’s recent work with Action Canada, which aims to create and maintain a network of outstanding young Canadians who will influence public policy, was “super, super important to him,” said Wendy.
“He was working on developing new leaders who would stay in Canada. His children left Canada, so he wanted to find ways to keep leaders in the country.”
Accolades were unimportant. When his children were growing up, he kept plaques and tokens of appreciation hidden under a bed. But university degrees were another matter, with every one of his children’s and grandchildren’s degrees proudly displayed on his wall.
MOM AND DAD LOST SO MANY OF THEIR BROTHERS AND SISTERS (IN THE HOLOCAUST). YET CANADA TOOK THEM IN. THIS COUNTRY TAKES PEOPLE IN, SO WHY SHOULDN’T WE HELP PEOPLE? IT’S OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO HELP. — SAMUEL BELZBERG