Reporters from Toronto Star have done a series of extremely well written and insightful interviews (not your usually fluffy and all positive interviews) with the five CBC Dragons: Kevin O’Leary, Arlene Dickinson, Jim Treliving, Robert Herjavec, Brett Wilson.
I greatly enjoy all of these interviews. And wish I could be as good in conducting some of my own interviews with people.
Note: The included excerpts (in the order they were published in TorStar) are meant to give you different sides of the dragons that we don’t usually see on the TV shows.
* Kevin O’Leary: Canada’s unrepentant Dragon – O’Leary is breathing fire (and building his personal brand) on CBC TV’s business reality show Dragons’ Den. Here is an excerpt,
What made Kevin O’Leary rich was the moment he calls the “massive liquidity event,” that is the sale of LCI to toymaker Mattel Inc. for $4.2 billion (U.S.). O’Leary wasn’t the company’s largest shareholder, not by a long shot.
According to 1998 securities filings, Thomas H. Lee Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm, held nine million shares. The Tribune Co. was next up with five million. Bain Capital had 3.4 million. O’Leary, the company’s president, had just over a million shares. O’Leary says he had more than that.
Within months of the deal, announced in December 1998, Mattel issued warnings of unexpected losses at LCI. Read the rest of this entry »