I come from a big Maltese family. We’re loud and opinionated, and we talk over one another all the time. I’m not saying we don’t get along, we truly do. But stick us in a boardroom and ask us to come to a decision involving millions or billions of dollars, and I suspect we’d end up sounding a bit like the Rogers family circa 2021.
Many of the country’s largest enterprises—both privately owned and publicly traded—are family operations, too, including George Weston Ltd., Alimentation Couche-Tard, Power Corp., Jim Pattison Group, Canadian Tire, Richardson Wealth, Saputo, the Irving Group, CGI, Empire Co., McCain Foods, Linamar, Fairfax Financial, the aforementioned Rogers Communications—the list goes on and on.
But just because family-controlled enterprises tend to outperform in aggregate doesn’t mean they don’t mess up. Which brings us to the subject of this month’s cover story: Bombardier, once the pride of Quebec — and the rest of Canada, for that matter— with divisions specializing in recreational vehicles, commercial aircraft, private jets and trains.