W. Brett Wilson – The Five Million Dollar Man

I couldn’t find any public record but I suspect W. Brett Wilson, the newest CBC Dragon and chairman of FirstEnergy Capital, worths considerably more than five million dollars. (big smile) Here is what Brett told Globe and Mail Report on Business in a 2007 interview,

[Reporter:] How much money do you have to work with?
[Brett:] Enough to get by. I like a model used in some private banking circles: You have three buckets of assets. The first bucket is your lifestyle assets; the second is the assets required to protect that lifestyle; and the third is your adventure assets. I have a significant adventure assets pool. I am looking at acquiring land across Western Canada, investing in the service and the power sectors, and I’m still buying into start-up oil and gas companies.

Where do your children fit in?
When you get hit by the bus in life, you’ve got two places to send your money—children or charity. I’m not a big fan of this practice of opening the will to determine where Dad’s money went. My kids know the vast bulk of my estate will go to charity. The issue for me is giving while living, and the best way to manage that. I’ll be doing a lot of philanthropic work using both my leadership skills and my money. And the kids will be fine. None of them can live on the inheritance because, frankly, there isn’t one. Both my ex-wife and I hope they will develop passion in their own right.

You see, the $5 million mentioned was one of Brett’s latest charitable donations, an amount donated to help create the new Southern Alberta Institute of Urology.

Sean Wise has two interesting entries here and here about Brett (with photos). Here is a link to a very well researched and written article in Avenue magazine when Brett won the Person of the Year. (highly recommended)

P.S. Brett (his plan of having “vast bulk of my estate will go to charity” and his focus on integrity and honesty) reminds me a little bit of Warren Buffett (more on Warren here).