Jim Pattison Born

Jim pattison born Continue Jim Pattison roars through the rural saskatchewan in his silver truck, barreling down the prairie road running arrow-right on the horizon. Thrown in the back seat is a sleeping bag and unlikely purple-dane pillow for Canada's self-made billionaire when he can't find a motel. Compliance with the speed limit seems optional, using the turn signal a later thought. Not that there's much in the way of obstacles – just shiny wheat fields that lie on land so flat that if you lose your dog, so they say, you could watch it run for three days. It is here, in the great bread basket of Canada, that Pattison was born and where, at the age of 90, he oversees one of the newest weapons of his $10 billion empire: Pattison Agriculture, a string of John Deere equipment dealers serving 21 million acres of farmland. Jim Pattison visits a Pattison Agriculture dealer in Moosomin, Saskatchewan. (Ben Nelms/Bloomberg) We see more opportunities than we ever have, says Pattison, steering with confidence, its diminutive frame overwhelmed by cavernous, black leather seats of the Ram 1500 Laramie truck. There are still a lot of opportunities with all the changes that are happening in the world. The trip offers a rare glimpse of the intensely private Pattison, Canada's third richest man, who created his iconic business group in the apparent defiance of the modern building empire. He avoids emails, wears a mobile phone, but barely checks it, and can count on the one hand how many times his group has used an investment bank in recent memory. Pattison is often called Canada Warren Buffett—a trope that highlights how relatively unknown he remains outside Canada, despite a conglomerate operating in 85 countries in a damp range of industries: supermarkets, timber, fishing, disposable packaging for KFC, Billboards in Canada and ownership of the No. 1 best-seller of all time, Guinness World Records. Believe it or not, he even owns the Ripley Entertainment Inc. Pattison empire pumping gasoline into Russell, Manitoba. (Ben Nelms/Bloomberg) Back in Omaha, I'm known as Jim Pattison of the United States, Buffett quipped this month when he surprised Pattison on stage in Toronto as the Canadian billionaire was introduced to the Walk of Fame country. Pattison rejects the comparison. Warren Buffett is in a class by himself, he insists. Pattison drove 1,700 kilometers (1,000 miles) from Jim Pattison Group Inc. headquarters in Vancouver, over the towering Canadian Rockies to the preers where he acquired four agricultural equipment companies to create Pattison Agriculture. Likes to fall into unannounced properties, including supermarkets and dealers but the word quickly gets around. You're the man we've all been waiting for, say at the dealership in Moosomin, Saskatchewan (population 3,100). You got a call, didn't you?, he says with a smile as he mingles in the store, helping himself to popcorn as he questionnaires employees. He listens carefully as they share their pain-lack points of mechanics, narrowing margins on new sales equipment, and intolerable noise in the cabin of a new tractor that has farmers complaining. He occasionally pulls out a tampon and a series of colored pens, but most of it relies on his still sharp blade memory. Pattison talks to a client at a Pattison Agriculture dealer in Moosomin. (Ben Nelms/Bloomberg) Pattison's story of rags-to-riches is reminiscent of another era. Born in Luseland during the Great Depression, he wore clothes sewn together from the castoffs of other children because the money was so tight. The family moved west when he was six, settling in the east of Vancouver. In the summer he returned to the family home in Saskatchewan, where the land was still ploughed by horses. A natural salesman, he was touting seeds door to door at the age of 7 and within a few years was trouncing mature men in a contest to sell most subscriptions of the Saturday Evening Post. His road to a fortune now worth about $6.3 billion began with a Pontiac Buick dealer in 1961. He bought it with a $40,000 Royal Bank of Canada loan after convincing the local manager to exceed the branch's lending limit five times. Keep the yellowing, handwritten financial statements from the first year in a transparent plastic folder. Pattison says his favorite job is to be another second-hand car salesman. If I had to, I could come back anytime. He turned this into a global business empire over the next five decades, completing hundreds of acquisitions to create the nation's second largest private company. Pattison's popular approach contradicts the tectonic changes facing some of his businesses. Magazines in their heyday were his best business of all, he says, but people aren't reading the print more-group agreed to sell the U.S. magazine's distribution business last month. Its car dealers have seen ride-sharing and autonomous driving threaten to accelerate the potential disappearance of ownership of the vehicle. One of its highest stakes in an outside company is Westshore Terminal investment Corp., North America's largest coal export facility in Vancouver-a cash cow with a declining lifespan in an era of tightening emission standards. Its largest public holding is a controlling holding in Canfor Corp, the that plunged about 35 percent this year as the U.S. housing market slows. Some businesses- we're exposed as hell, he says. But we do our best. That's part of the reason I have a job. Behind this stodgy image are businesses that navigate technological disruptions. Pattison Agriculture dealership in is a recently renovated hub in a region of 60,000 acres farms, some larger than Lichtenstein. Most of the equipment inside costs half a million dollars each; some customers will drop as much as $40 million a year in purchases. See how much it costs to be a farmer these days? Pattison asks while walking around the warehouse, his 5-foot-6-inch dwarfed frame of tires on some of the cars. There will be fewer and fewer small farms. What happens is consolidation, consolidation, consolidation. Pattison speaks to a mechanic at a Pattison Agriculture dealership in Yorkton. (Ben Nelms/Bloomberg) Pattison's low profile is sometimes punctuated by a well-calculated show. When Marilyn Monroe's provocative, flesh-colored dress in 1962 to sing Happy Birthday to then President John F. Kennedy came to auction, Pattison called his son, Jim Jr., who runs the Ripley Entertainment business. I almost had a heart attack when I saw what they thought the dress would go for, says Jim Jr. in a phone interview in Orlando, Florida. We have to make a profit from everything we invest. I didn't want it. His father bid for it anyway, paying more than $5 million, making it the most expensive dress in the world. The company has reaped dividends in advertising since the purchase, Jim Jr. says. News of Ripley's 2016 acquisition has set off a global storm on Twitter. The dress drew crowds to Ripley's places in North America, and clothing will soon embark on a world tour, where visitors will be able to try on a true replica-to-hourglass-size of it. The dress was a rare splurge for a man who started with so little. Most of the time, I didn't have the money to buy anything that was any good, so I had to buy things that no one wanted, explains Pattison. I didn't know what goodwill is for a long time, he says about the premium paid in purchases for intangible assets as a brand. Historically, he has kept the existing leadership in place after the takeovers, and gives his deputies a long board. He trusts people to do their job, his son says. The organizational hierarchy is as flat as the surrounding pre-jeries. Pattison listens to the sales team at a Pattison Agriculture dealer in Moosomin. (Ben Nelms/Bloomberg) My responsibility is to help you be the most competitive in this area, Pattison Sr. often tells his employees, instructing them to take down his number if he hit a wall. But we can't fix it if we don't know what the problem is. Instead, he demands results. In its first years of running a car dealer, Pattison would fire the worst seller performance per lot every month. In practice, he says was more flexible and intuitive. The best salesman I've had hasn't sold a car for two months, but I stayed with him, says Pattison. It only took me a while to decide He was supposed to help him. For a company with 45,000 employees, it's still running a bit like a startup. To this day, the company's headquarters on the 18th floor, overlooking Vancouver Harbour and Stanley Park, does not have a human resources department. The most important hiring decisions over the years have been made by Pattison and Maureen Chant, his executive assistant for over 50 years. Chant may have the most undervalued job title in corporate Canada. With her snow-white hair shock and round face, she looks more like a kind grandmother than the invisible hand that held Pattison and his incongruous empire. Chant advises the group's nearly 30 business divisions and has influenced those who run them. She oversees Pattison's $25 million, 150-foot yacht, Nova Spirit, which hosted everyone from Princess Diana to Oprah Winfrey. She also looks after her private jets, her vancouver office apartment and a palm springs property (formerly owned by Frank Sinatra) where Pattison gathers his top lieutenants once a year.

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