Meet the Real Pierre-Karl Péladeau

 Early into his entry into the campaign as a PQ candidate Pierre-Karl Péladeau boasted to reporters that if he ran his companies the way the Liberal government ran the province, he would be bankrupt.
It was a cute line, one that had the throng of reporters eating out of his hand, but one that had me shaking my head in disbelief.

Not one reporter challenged PKP on his statement because his company did indeed go bankrupt and it was quite a spectacular bankruptcy at that.

There is a popular misconception in  Quebec and in the ROC that Pierre-Karl Péladeau is a local version of Warren Buffet or Ronald Perelman, a brilliant business visionary who made his fortune on talent, acumen and guile.

...Sorry readers,  I feel incumbent  to pop that balloon.
First things first, Péladeau is no brilliant entrepreneur, he made his money the old fashioned way....he inherited it!

When PKP's father, the irascible Pierre Péladeau died, he left Pierre the keys to a printing and newspaper empire. The Péladeau senior was a man who did indeed build a business empire from scratch and was the very embodiment of the stereotypical rough and tumble shark, a nasty antisemite, who was as hard on his family as he was on himself.

Pierre Péladeau was a miserly bastard and when I think of him, I always remember the television show on Quebec TV that played practical jokes on Quebec personalities.
On this particular episode, a fake tollbooth was set up on the exclusive road that led to his private estate and when Péladeau was stopped and informed that he'd forthwith have to pay a toll every time he came or left his home his reaction was priceless. The renowned cheapskate went absolutely ape shit at the idea and embarrassed himself royally on camera. How the episode ever made it to air is beyond me.

At any rate, the reality was that Quebecor was a failing business, the printing business going the way of the saddle at the turn of the last century or within my memory, telegrams, the typewriter,  the pager or for that matter, film in a camera and one-hour photo-finishing in the mall.....well, you get the picture.
The digital age has not rendered the printer business obsolete, but has drastically shrunk the market, where practically all the big players are closing or re-organizing.

With the handwriting on the wall, PKP got lucky, very, very, lucky.

It just so happens that the Government of Quebec was looking for a white knight, a Francophone White Knight, to save Videotron from being bought by ROGERS, the Ontario-based cable behemoth, seen in Quebec as a foreign entity and dangerous interloper.
Bernard Landry summed up neatly the attitude of the Quebec government at the time;
"Could you imagine how the British would react if Americans made a bid for the BBC?" 

It's happened before, an indignant Quebec government, panicked into an overpriced purchase of a company because of the fear that these enterprises would fall into the  hands of foreigners Anglo Canadian companies.

 Readers with long memories might remember what happened when Loblaws made an offer to purchase the Steinberg food chain back in 1988 for $1.5 billion. The Quebec government, fearful of another Ontario takeover, bought the company  for $1.8 billion  through Soconav, a Quebec company involved in shipping and with no experience in the food business.
Steinberg foundered and was eventually sold off piecemeal, another fine financial disaster.

Fast forward to 2000, where the Quebec government was again frightened by a potential Canadian takeover of another Quebec jewel, Rogers attempted takeover of Videotron, Quebec's largest cable distributor.

Teaming up with Quebecor, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (Quebec's public retirement fund) purchased Videotron for $3.2 billion, the CDPQ taking back  45% in shares in Quebecor in exchange for the cash.

So single-minded and determined was the CDPQ to save Videotron that they failed to consider just how dim the prospects were for Quebecor and so invested heavily in a failing business.

Fast forward again to 2008 when Quebecor World, the major component of the Quebecor conglomerate went bankrupt, leaving Quebecor hobbled with Videotron now representing its most important asset, accounting for  70% of the companies profits.

It certainly was a precipitous turn of events for PKP, who was rescued by the CDPQ purchase, but not such a good deal for the CDPQ  and taxpayers.

In 2012 the CDPQ sold almost half of its shares in Videotron in frustration over the poor performance of the stock. The  $1.5 billion realized on the sale was almost exactly what it paid twelve years earlier, when one adds in dividend payments made along the way.
In other words they made nothing on the 12 year long investment.

Had the CDPQ put the money into bonds yielding 5%, it would have reaped a $2 billion dollar profit over the twelve years.
Better still, had the CDPQ not bought Quebecor and instead bought shares in ROGERS in 2000, the investment would be worth over six billion dollars today, over three billion more than they earned with the investment with Péladeau! Link{fr}

Still think Péladeau is a genius businessman?.....Well in certain respects he is, for himself, but for Quebec taxpayers, who are out 2-3 billion dollars in their dealings with PKP, its quite another story....

Over the years, Péladeau has proven in one respect to be a chip off the old block, he's got a mean streak a mile wide and is ruthless in his affairs, just like his father.
 Péladeau companies have been involved in twelve lockouts, the most famous involved the Journal de Montreal, in which he broke the back of the union by contracting out news gathering through a loophole in Quebec labour law.

When Pauline Marois announced Péladeau as the Messiah who would propel the PQ over the top, I was one of the few who offered the opinion that it might backfire badly.

"With the Quebec Liberals a lot closer in the polls than was predicted by the media of late, Péladeau will be the linchpin to an election win or loss for the PQ.
While Pauline sees Péladeau as a necessary component to election victory, she may be making a pact with the devil and the gambit could very well backfire. Link

 I said that because Quebecers, especially the PQ and leftist bloc have a deep aversion to Péladeau, he is in fact the antithesis of what they believe in. A union-buster and capitalist of the first order, the only thing that he brought to the table was his success in business and it now is clear that the negative far outweighed the positive.

And so Marois has relegated PKP to the back of the room, we've not heard anything of substance from him ever since his fist pump in favour of sovereignty, a move that quite clearly sent the PQ into a downward death spiral.
When he does speak out, its only to mouth vapid PQ platitudes, giving off the distinct appearance of the proverbial Emperor with no clothes, exposed as something a lot less formidable than we expected, a legend debunked.