Jim Pattison: the biggest Canadian succession dilemma you’ve never heard of

How do you fill the shoes of a man who built one of Canada’s biggest companies from scratch, rising from a lowly car salesman to become the country’s wealthiest person? It’s a tough question that someone will have to answer when Jim Pattison, 86 and recently crowned Canada’s richest man, finally decides to step down as head of his namesake company.

Pattison has been part of the Western Canadian business firmament for decades. But if you live east of the prairies, the Jim Pattison Group just may be the biggest Canadian company you’ve never heard of, though you’ve probably been a customer.

Even if you haven’t purchased a car from Pattison, there’s a good chance your hair spray was packaged by his company, or you may have visited one of his grocery stores on a trip out west. And chances are you’ve bought a book or magazine from his North America-wide distribution business, which places periodicals at store checkouts.

Oh, and if you’ve visited the new Ripley’s Aquarium in Toronto or picked up a Guinness Book of World Records… well, he owns them too.

His name doesn’t have the cachet of Canadian business royalty like Thomson or Irving, but it probably should, particularly after Bloomberg named him Canada’s richest person last year with a fortune of US$9.5 billion.

All told, the Jim Pattison Group rakes in about $8 billion in revenue a year from an empire that continues to grow with about a dozen acquisitions a year.

Its success has been predicated on Pattison’s Midas touch, and so it’s unavoidable for some to wonder if his eventual replacement will be able to up to the task of succeeding him.

“I think they’re going to have a very difficult time replacing him,” says Ian Lee, a business professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. “He really is Canada’s Warren Buffett, and how in God’s name to you replace Warren Buffett?”

While the Warren Buffett comparison is meant to flatter, in some ways it undersells the spectacular nature of a rise that began with a job selling used cars on a Vancouver lot. In 1961, he finagled a bank loan and bought a Pontiac dealership, and was off and running.

And while Buffett is an investor, Pattison is not a stock picker, but rather an old-school entrepreneur. He buys businesses and surrounds himself with a group of divisional operators that have strict performance standards to meet.

“(Pattison’s) first focus is certainly his family and he’s loyal to his church. But beyond that he just loves making money, and that is not a joke,” said Graeme Roberts, who has known Pattison since the 1950s and was on the board of Pattison’s Air BC during the 1980s.

Pattison himself has been tight-lipped about succession, and the small group of executives and advisors at this head office maintain a cone of silence on that and other subjects. Pattison has in the past spoken of the value of corporate secrets, and his assistant Maureen Chant, who has learned how to a keep one or two in her more than 50 years by his side, politely but firmly refused an interview with her boss.

An obvious candidate would be former B.C. premier Glen Clark, who has served as president – the No. 2 position in the company – since 2011. Others point to David Cobb, the former head of BC Hydro, who is currently Pattison’s managing director of corporate development.

Another name that has to be in the discussion is Pattison’s son Jim Jr., who currently runs the Ripley’s business arm out of Florida. But the elder Pattison has talked down the idea of his company being a family business, which suggests he’s not just going to just hand over the keys to one of his children when the time comes to step down.

And who can blame him? The Canadian business landscape has seen plenty of empire-builders leave the business to, ahem, less capable heirs (no offense, Bronfmans and Eatons, but we’re talking about you). And maybe it’s refreshing to see a patriarch not trying to commandeer his son’s life with the maintenance of the family legacy.

There’s also the question, beyond who will run the company, of what will happen with the ownership when Pattison eventually passes on? Will it go to his family, and will they be content to continue to own the whole thing, or will they sell it, or perhaps take it public, which raises the possibility of a big old-economy conglomerate trading on the TSX.

“You’ve got a double transition here. The one transition is from Jimmy Pattison to Jimmy Pattison’s successor, and at some point you’ll have succession from the Pattison family to professional managers. And it might happen at the same time,” says Lee.

But it would be unfair to Pattison to start writing premature obituaries. He’s been going strong for longer than most can remember, and hasn’t shown signs of slowing down any time soon.

“Obviously life doesn’t go on forever, but as long as Jimmy can see lightning and hear thunder I think he will still be at that office,” says Roberts.