Sherman friend told to leave Apotex
A year after Barry and Honey Sherman were found murdered, his longtime business partner let go from drug giant they built Two days before the anniversary of Barry Sherman’s murder, Jonathon Sherman told his father’s longtime partner and friend Jack Kay to leave Apotex, the generic drug company the two men built over 35 years.
Kay, the chief executive officer of Apotex, was sitting in his office last Tuesday when Jonathon Sherman walked in and said his services were no longer required, according to a source with knowledge of what happened. Kay, 78, was told to return to Apotex after business hours to collect his belongings.
“It was like a gut punch. Actually, a gut punch is an understatement,” said an Apotex insider with knowledge of what happened on Dec. 11. By Monday of this week, Canada’s small pharmaceutical manufacturing industry was buzzing with the news that Kay was out the door.
At the time of Kay’s dismissal, plans were being made for a companywide day of mourning later that week. The bodies of Barry Sherman and his wife Honey were found in their Toronto home on Dec. 15, 2017, two days after they are believed to have been strangled there in what police have termed a “targeted” double homicide.
For this story, the Star provided questions to Jonathon Sherman, and Apotex executives Jordan Berman and Jeff Watson.
Berman responded with a statement confirming Kay’s departure, but did not answer questions about the manner of his departure or the apparent tensions between Kay and the Shermans’ son.
“Upon the successful completion of our transition plan, Jack Kay is no longer with the company,” Berman wrote.
“All of us at Apotex wish Jack the best of luck in his future pursuits. Jeff Watson, currently president and COO, is now ready to lead Apotex into the future. Jeff has been with Apotex for 24+ years, working in various capacities including chief commercial officer for North America, and president of global generics.
“All of us at Apotex wish Jack (Kay) the best of luck,” says statement from executive Jordan Berman
“Jeff is well respected within the industry, and we are very proud to have him leading the company,” Berman wrote.
Reached by the Star Tuesday, Kay declined to comment.
The Sherman children recently offered a $10-million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever killed their parents. A tip line set up by the family directs callers to a private investigation team — not Toronto police, who had treated the case as a murder-suicide until a Star story prompted them to review the results of private autopsies conducted on the victims’ bodies.
Kay, who owns shares in the privately held Apotex, was vicechairman of the company’s board of directors but semi-retired from executive duties when Barry Sherman died. He was called into action by the Sherman family and the Apotex executive team in the days that followed, and in January was reinstated as chief executive officer, a job he had previously held for many years.
Kay was working for a pharmaceutical company in Montreal when he was headhunted by Barry Sherman in 1982 to be vice-president of sales and marketing for Apotex, the company Sherman had founded in the mid-1970s. Kay described to the Star last summer how he and Sherman hit it off immediately.
“For each of us, it is fair to say we were the brother neither of us had,” he recalled. “That day in Montreal, he said, ‘Jack, come work with me. We will build Apotex and we will make a bit of money and have fun.’”
Kay, a workout enthusiast with a crushing handshake who maintained a strict diet, was the polar opposite of Sherman, who loved chocolate and junk food and exercised only because wife Honey insisted, say longtime colleagues and friends. Kay and his wife, Pat, often dined with Barry and Honey. The couples maintained a close friendship. Under Sherman and Kay, Apotex grew to a multinational and multibillion dollar generic drug manufacturer, employing 10,000 people as of this year. According to Kay, and interviews with other Apotex executives over the past year, the two men worked closely for 35 years, starting in a shared office when the company was small and later in adjoining offices when it became a going concern. “Our connecting door was always open,” Kay recalled in an interview last summer.
Sherman was the scientist and the idea man, Kay said, while his job was to “operationalize” Sherman’s ideas. When Barry and Honey Sherman were killed, majority ownership of the company went to the Sherman children: Lauren, 43, Jonathon, 35, Alexandra, 32, and Kaelen, 28. None of them were working at Apotex at the time.
The Sherman estate has four trustees: Jack Kay, Jonathon Sherman, Brad Krawczyk (who is Alexandra’s husband), and Alex Glasenberg, an Apotex executive who manages the family’s investments. A court has sealed the estate file, saying it contains information that could be of importance to the police investigation and due to a fear of the family of “kidnapping and violence” if details of the file were revealed. The Star is appealing the sealing order.
In the past year, Apotex continued its role as Canada’s biggest generic pharmaceutical company, but has sold off some of the international business interests Kay and Barry Sherman had grown or purchased. During the summer, Apotex announced it had sold its commercial interests in the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain and Belgium to “further accelerate our efforts to drive additional growth in the Americas,” according to a statement by Watson, who was hired many years ago by Kay and Sherman. Kay had moved into Barry Sherman’s office in the Apotex headquarters at 150 Signet Dr., and photos of the two men together over the years — some in business suits, some in lab coats — adorned the walls prior to Kay’s departure last week.
According to sources in Canada’s pharmaceutical industry, there was growing tension between the 35-year-old Jonathon Sherman and Kay over what direction the company should take.
The sources say that Kay, as a shareholder and longtime executive, had planned to retire in the coming months but wanted to remain connected to Apotex out of loyalty to Barry Sherman and because of his institutional knowledge of the company. Kay wanted to make sure Sherman’s “legacy was protected,” sources say.
Jonathon Sherman keeps a low profile. He has briefly worked in some of his father’s non-pharmaceutical businesses over the years, and is involved in a storage company. He lives with his husband on a sprawling, heavily wooded property in King City, north of Toronto. Land registry records show Jonathon purchased the property at a cost of $2 million in 2006, when he was 23.
At the funeral for his parents, Jonathon noted that his father was often and understandably too busy to attend his sporting events when he was a child but, on the few occasions he did watch him play hockey or baseball, “those few games were my Stanley Cups and my World Series.” Jonathon also told mourners that his father was a “real-life super hero” and a “great Canadian.”
Of his mother, Jonathon told mourners that Honey was heavily involved in his childhood, making sure to attend all parent-teacher interviews and after-school events. “Our mother always had everything taken care of,” he said.
The Star has made several attempts to interview Jonathon Sherman about his parents and their legacy. However, the Star could not agree to Sherman’s terms — he wanted “sole and absolute discretion” to edit any information about him of which he did not approve.
At the funeral, Jack Kay told the mourners that “for 35 years I was incredibly privileged to work side by side, day by day with Barry.”
Kay said he was lucky to have “partnered with him as he built Apotex into the incredible enterprise it is today ... Barry and I would refer to each other as brothers and I cannot tell you how much I will miss him.”