Jewish Titans and Untold Triumphs: Predicting the 2008 Crash, The Architect of Canadian Pride, and More Hidden Stories You've Never Heard!

Harley Finkelstein (00:00):
So, we recorded a ton of content, and we tried to package it in a way that it was concise, it was interesting. We obviously couldn't make three-hour episodes.

David Segal (00:07):
We've got too many stories.

Harley Finkelstein (00:08):
We have way too many stories.

David Segal (00:09):
Bonus stories.

Harley Finkelstein (00:10):
But there are some stories, bonus stories, that we cannot finish season one without at least sharing with all of you, because some of these stories are so amazing. I mean, do you remember growing up as a kid in Canada and seeing these Canadian Heritage minutes? Where it was this wonderful, I don't know, 30-second, one minute ad. Literally-

David Segal (00:29):
Right. Laura Secord.

Harley Finkelstein (00:30):
[00:00:30] It was a television commercial about Laura Secord and the cow, right?

David Segal (00:33):
Yeah, exactly.

Harley Finkelstein (00:34):
Or some interesting tidbit about Canada. It turns out it was Charles Bronfman who was frustrated by the lack of storytelling, the narrative, the lack of Canadian pride. Who went to his team, and he said he banged his hands on the desk and said, "We need more of this." Yeah, everyone used to bang their hands on the desk.

(00:50):
Now I feel like super aggressive.

David Segal (00:50):
In a Zoom meeting, you're banging the keyboard.

Harley Finkelstein (00:55):
Microaggressions no good. But because of his [00:01:00] dissatisfaction with the pride and the brand of Canada, Charles went ahead and created Canadian Heritage Minutes.

David Segal (01:06):
And I love some of the stories that didn't make it in that you're now going to hear about. One of the ones I love is Eddie Sonshine, how he talks about how he predicted the US crash in 2008 and what he did about it in order to profit.

Harley Finkelstein (01:17):
It's amazing. I mean, once you go a level deeper with some of these guys. One of the stories that Jonathan Wiener talks about is at some point in his life, he figured out that his grandfather was this incredible painter.

David Segal (01:29):
Right.

Harley Finkelstein (01:30):
[00:01:30] And there were paintings all over Quebec, but they were in churches. And so he went on this hunt at a certain point to try to effectively acquire all these paintings because it was so important to him.

David Segal (01:39):
Right.

Harley Finkelstein (01:40):
And the way he did it, I mean, he used his entrepreneurial instinct to acquire family heirloom, which I thought was just so amazing.

David Segal (01:46):
I mean, another one of my favorites, especially having taken David Steve to the US and experienced that, is how when Aldo took all those shoes into the US, how he approached that and he did it in a very, very smart way.

Harley Finkelstein (01:57):
And most retailers failed, by going from Canada to the US.

David Segal (01:59):
Almost every single [00:02:00] Canadian retailer fails in the US. You can count them on one hand, the one's who succeeded.

Harley Finkelstein (02:05):
It's amazing. Okay, we have so many of these stories, some of them we just wanted to make sure all of you saw because we love the audience. We know you love these stories and we love these people. And so we thought we'd share some of them with you in these bonus episodes. [Song]

(02:21):
Now you're going to [00:02:30] hear from Jonathan Wener, the founder of Canderel.

Jonathan Wener (02:38):
My Kids are seventh generation Canadian.

Harley Finkelstein (02:42):
Wow.

Jonathan Wener (02:43):
Grandchildren, eighth. Highly unusual.

Harley Finkelstein (02:46):
Right.

Jonathan Wener (02:46):
People used to say, how come you don't understand Yiddish?

Harley Finkelstein (02:52):
Right.

Jonathan Wener (02:52):
And I knew all the wrong words, but Yiddish was never in our family. So [00:03:00] recollection is early 18 hundreds was the first arrival of the family. My great-great-grandfather was the first member of the RCA, the Royal Academy of Artists. So he became the first Jewish member in 1866. And we were walking around, and I have from one painting that I had, we've collected 140 of them over the last 40 years. And he was [00:03:30] a contemporary of Cree golf. They both worked in the Notman studio. He taught painting in Lachine in a mother house called the Soeurs de Ste-Anne. And there's a fabulous little story there, if I can interject it.

David Segal (03:49):
Please. Yeah.

Jonathan Wener (03:50):
For the last 25 years, I had found out about the Soeurs de Ste-Anne and the fact that my great-great grandfather had an atelier right [00:04:00] next to the altar, and he had painted the two paintings of Christ left and right of the altar.

(04:07):
And then there was this beautiful little atelier where he taught the nuns to paint, but he also did a lot of his own paintings, and I found 80 paintings of his there. And I was after the nuns every year for 25 years asking them if they would consider selling the paintings, and I would even do reproductions and put them in the original frames because I didn't care about the frames. [00:04:30] And they said, no, no, they weren't interested.

(04:33):
So Charlie Flicker joined me as CEO of our family office, and I said, Charlie, one of your responsibilities to check with the nuns every year, second year, he comes beaming and beating his chest and telling me, you'll never guess. I said, "what?" He said, "the nuns have decided to close the mother house. They've sold it and they want to give you 40 paintings."

David Segal (04:58):
Wow. It's unbelievable.

Jonathan Wener (04:58):
And the [00:05:00] 40 except for two. The other 40 went to the Lachine museum except for two. I had the best of the lot and I was over the top. I mean, I still get my hair standing on end thinking about it. And I said, "why?" They said, "because you are the legitimate heir and we want it in good hands."

David Segal (05:25):
Are you a painter yourself?

Jonathan Wener (05:27):
I do some. But I honestly haven't had a lot [00:05:30] of time in the last 20 years.

David Segal (05:31):
Right.

Jonathan Wener (05:31):
But I did a bit of painting and I could see going forward, maybe I'll do some more. But its self-taught. (Song)

David Segal (05:41):
Now you're going to hear from Eddie Sonshine, the founder of RioCan, one of Canada's largest real estate development companies. A huge moment for you also was 2008. You had some sense that what was coming and sold some key assets. And then in 2009, [00:06:00] you go into the US at possibly the best time ever.

Ed Sonshine (06:03):
Well, part of that was good fortune. Not the US. I'll take full credit or blame for it, but I have to admit, I got a great advantage, first of all for being on the World Bank Board. I went on the board in 2007, and you learn things if you keep your ears open.

Harley Finkelstein (06:19):
And Royal Bank, just for those listening, is not only the largest bank in Canada, but also the highest market cap company in the country and one of the most important banks on the planet.

Ed Sonshine (06:28):
There's an old story. Well, they're globally, [00:06:30] systemically important. They're considered, they're one of the largest banks. Well over a trillion dollars in assets. But I am just smiling because whenever a company supplants World Bank as the number one market cap, I'm not going to mention names -

Harley Finkelstein (06:45):
Don't tell them this.

Ed Sonshine (06:47):
It's never a good ending. But anyway -

Harley Finkelstein (06:50):
That's true. That's true.

Ed Sonshine (06:51):
So historically, they are the number one.

Harley Finkelstein (06:53):
The Red Sox eventually won the World Series.

David Segal (06:55):
I believe there's an exception to that.

Ed Sonshine (06:57):
I believe you're right. I hope you're right. But [00:07:00] listen, Imperial Oil did it once and then the oil market crashed. So it's not just -

Harley Finkelstein (07:05):
That's true. By the way, the Royal Bank thing is, I mean, remarkable. You talk about pre-war, this is like pre, pre, pre. This is the pinnacle of Old Money Canada establishment.

Ed Sonshine (07:15):
I had thousands, literally thousands -

Harley Finkelstein (07:17):
For a guy like you to be on the board -

Ed Sonshine (07:18):
Thousands of emails and letters from Jews saying my partner, my old partner, Lloyd Fogler called me up. He says, "Eddie, that you're on the World Bank [00:07:30] of Canada board. I can't believe it. I got to take you out for lunch."

David Segal (07:33):
Right.

Ed Sonshine (07:34):
Okay.

David Segal (07:34):
A sun and shine on the board.

Ed Sonshine (07:35):
Yeah. And I remember Ira Gluskin.

Harley Finkelstein (07:38):
Yeah, I know Ira.

Ed Sonshine (07:38):
Whom I'm sure you know, called me up and he said, "Eddie, that's so amazing. You're on the board." So I was trying to be humble. I said, "ah, there's a Jewish seat." So he said, "you know what? First of all. I don't believe that they wanted you, but even if there is a Jewish seat, they picked you out of 350,000. So that's not so bad."

Harley Finkelstein (07:57):
That's pretty good, yeah. Funny. I think Ira just sold his company or is now [00:08:00] at Royal Bank. Gluskin Sheff, I think is now -

Ed Sonshine (08:03):
He left 13 years ago.

Harley Finkelstein (08:04):
Onex.

Ed Sonshine (08:05):
Gluskin Sheff Onex and Onex [inaudible 00:08:09] no disrespect to Jerry Schwartz, but they've sort of -

Harley Finkelstein (08:13):
Pushed it out.

Ed Sonshine (08:14):
The guys were all leaving and they were going to RBC GAM, Global Asset Management. So they just made a deal.

Harley Finkelstein (08:20):
Move there, got it.

Ed Sonshine (08:20):
They moved it over, it's unfortunate, but -

David Segal (08:24):
How'd that board thing work out? How did that even happen?

Ed Sonshine (08:26):
Well, before even that, just before I went on the board in the summer [00:08:30] of .07. I had a senior banker that I knew who was at Bank of Montreal, actually. He was head of real estate, and we had a lunch and golf planned that afternoon. And they called me up that morning. He said, "Eddie, I can't go play golf because I got a meeting." I said, "What kind of meeting you're going to set aside a golf game?" And he said, "well, I have to." I said, "Well, you want to still do lunch?" "Sure." So we went out for lunch and I said, "what kind of meeting? [00:09:00] It suddenly came up."

(09:01):
He said, "well, look, we don't use the word emergency in the bank, but we call this an unscheduled meeting." I said, "What's going on?" He says, "I don't know, but it's really quite odd" He said, "I don't know if you know this, but let's say we do a hundred million dollars loan to RioCan - the Way Banks work. we'll typically sell off 90 million of that loan because we want to keep our book open for you. We [00:09:30] don't want to use up all our, let's say your limit with us might be a billion, so we don't want to use it all up. We want to have more room. Plus we make fees by administering it. And you never even know who owns your loan"

Harley Finkelstein (09:41):
Yeah, you have no idea.

Ed Sonshine (09:41):
You don't know. That's the way banks work. I said, "actually, I didn't know that." He said, "well, that's like the most liquid market and active market. Well, suddenly over the last few days, there's almost no bids. Like the RioCan credit's a great credit. I'd expect a bid of 99.5 [00:10:00] on a dollar. The bids are coming in at 90. It means they don't want it and we're not going to sell it." And then he says, "so we're having a meeting saying, what's going on?"

(10:13):
I went back to my office, I didn't go play golf, and I said, "what's going on? There's something going on." I called a couple of other bankers I knew, I said, "I'm hearing things." I didn't give up my source. He said, "yeah, yeah." I said, "well, what does it mean?" And what it started to mean [00:10:30] was to these guys, there's a lack of liquidity in the system. So banks aren't that flush. They don't have enough capital, maybe. They're losing deposits, maybe. There's a problem perhaps on the horizon. So I looked at it and the way I ran RioCan, this was in the fall of '07, we had every year I would take the guys down after we issued [00:11:00] our year-end results in February, I was already going to Florida for a few weeks. Everybody fly. All the senior execs will go down to Florida.

(11:10):
It sounds very nice, but we basically lock ourselves up in a boardroom in a hotel for two to three days, and we'd go through every property we owned. A couple of hundred of them, at that time, 250. Looking for challenges, opportunities. What can we do [00:11:30] to make things better? What should we sell? Whatever. That's what we came out. We came up with the sort of property level business plan for that year. We already had a budget, and then we did the business plan on the property level, having that budget in mind. And I said, "guys," I said right at the beginning of the meeting, I said, "everything I hear is there's liquidity issues happening already and it's going to get worse." So I said, "I [00:12:00] got to go back to base case of how RioCan works." Everything. The most important thing is called cashflow.

(12:09):
Second most important thing is liquidity. Actually, the two go together. So I said "I want to start with isolating every property we have that doesn't have any cashflow or isn't cash flowing for its debt." Happily, there's not that many, but we had a whole bunch of land things that.

Harley Finkelstein (12:27):
Don't generate any cash.

Ed Sonshine (12:29):
They're [00:12:30] all liability.

Harley Finkelstein (12:30):
That's right.

David Segal (12:31):
Right. Just cost.

Ed Sonshine (12:32):
Because you're paying taxes. You're paying. And I said, so we came out of that meeting with a program to get rid of them as many as we could as the next six months. And we were able to generate a lot of cash. We sold land, we sold some lower performing shopping centers. We got a bunch of mortgages while getting was good. And then of course, by later that year, Bear Stearns went, Lehman Brothers went, and you had the great, great financial crisis.

(13:00):
[00:13:00] Now, the only good news about that was it only lasted six months because the central banks just flooded the old Joe Helicopter, Ben Bernanke. And the reason he was called that, he said they didn't have to be a depression. If they would've had helicopters in those days, I would've flown around a helicopter dropped out bundles of cash and there wouldn't have been a depression. Depressions are caused by a lot of things, but the root cause is nobody has any money and liquidity just goes away. So [00:13:30] central banks have actually figured that out, and they flooded the banks with cash. That's how they fixed it. And then we came to Spring and I saw Simon down in the States.

Harley Finkelstein (13:40):
Property group.

Ed Sonshine (13:43):
Biggest guys in the world, literally based out of Indianapolis of all places.

Harley Finkelstein (13:50):
Juice, I think.

David Segal (13:50):
Oh, yeah.

Harley Finkelstein (13:51):
Juice.

David Segal (13:52):
Yeah.

Ed Sonshine (13:52):
Yeah, he owns the -

David Segal (13:54):
David Simon.

Ed Sonshine (13:55):
Owns the Indiana Pacers. Most of the Jews in the NBA -

David Segal (13:58):
And authentic [00:14:00] brands.

Harley Finkelstein (14:00):
Yeah, I know.

Ed Sonshine (14:01):
He nominated Larry Tanenbaum to be - Larry is the chair, the governor -

Harley Finkelstein (14:07):
Of the NBA.

David Segal (14:07):
Of the NBA.

Ed Sonshine (14:08):
Nominated by David Simon.

Harley Finkelstein (14:10):
Wow.

Ed Sonshine (14:10):
It was pretty cool for a Canadian guy.

Harley Finkelstein (14:12):
Very cool. Yeah.

Ed Sonshine (14:13):
But anyway, I saw Simon did a unsecured venture deal in the States in March, and now they paid, I think 12% or something, but they got it done. So I said, "I think the markets are starting to open." So we're watching [00:14:30] very carefully, and I'm not talking to the bankers at this point because they're hiding under their desks. The bankers, but who I was talking to were the guys who actually bought the bonds and one of the head of bonds at TD Asset Management, at the time it was - I can't remember his name. It was an Indian guy, but I can't remember his name. He was very smart. He was like a PhD in math.

(14:54):
And I called him up and I said, "if I wanted to do a RioCan bond now, could [00:15:00] I get an order from you?" He said, "well, usually bankers call me for orders." I said, "well, I'm not doing one. It's not a real order, but give me a notional order. What's spread over Canada as what I have to pay to get you to buy?" And he thinks for very quickly, a few seconds, he says, "you know what, Eddie? You do 600 over Canada's. I'll take as much as you want to issue."

Harley Finkelstein (15:23):
Wow.

Ed Sonshine (15:24):
I said, "what if I want to issue a billion dollars?" I'll take it.

Harley Finkelstein (15:28):
Now, this is because you cleaned [00:15:30] up your balance sheet. You have such a strong cashflow -

David Segal (15:32):
Triple A rating -

Ed Sonshine (15:33):
And they felt the world was writing itself.

Harley Finkelstein (15:35):
Got it.

Ed Sonshine (15:36):
So he was making a double, but he was betting on our credit, which was good.

David Segal (15:39):
Right. But at a massive premium relative to the risk.

Ed Sonshine (15:42):
600 over.

David Segal (15:43):
Right.

Ed Sonshine (15:43):
I mean, before the great financial crisis, we were doing deals at 200, over 150, over.

David Segal (15:49):
Right.

Ed Sonshine (15:49):
600 over was crazy. But I didn't say no.

Harley Finkelstein (15:54):
Yup.

Ed Sonshine (15:54):
And then I started calling the bankers. I said, guys, "if I get you a lead order, I [00:16:00] didn't need a billion." I said, "if I get you a lead order on a $500 million issue, what do you think I should go at?" Anyway, when all was said and done, we thought we could do the deal at around 500 over. And I didn't want to sell it all to one guy anyway. So if he -

Harley Finkelstein (16:16):
And he wanted 600 anyway.

Ed Sonshine (16:19):
Yeah, but he came in the deal.

Harley Finkelstein (16:20):
Okay.

Ed Sonshine (16:20):
600 was his opening bid.

Harley Finkelstein (16:23):
Okay.

Ed Sonshine (16:23):
In fact, he ended up taking half the deal.

Harley Finkelstein (16:26):
Okay.

David Segal (16:26):
I mean, what's a hundred between friends?

Ed Sonshine (16:28):
Nobody's friends.

Harley Finkelstein (16:28):
It's 1%. What do you mean?

Ed Sonshine (16:30):
[00:16:30] You got to remember, bond guys will kill you for one basis point.

Harley Finkelstein (16:33):
Yeah, it's over a hundred basis points. It's lots.

Ed Sonshine (16:34):
That's how they make a living. But we are going to launch on a Monday morning. That weekend, General Motors declared bankruptcy.

Harley Finkelstein (16:46):
Oh my God.

Ed Sonshine (16:47):
They declared bankruptcy. General Motors. And I got a call on Sunday night. Eddie, we're not launching right after the GM. And I said, "why not? What have I got to do with GM?" The [00:17:00] markets are going to be in disarray. We got to wait. Anyways, so all day Monday, I'm talking to the bankers. They wouldn't do it. They just wouldn't do it. Even though I called the guy at TD, he was okay. Tuesday morning, I finally said, "look, either you guys launch or I'm going to another bank." They launched, was successful, we got it done at 500 over. A year later, I actually bought it back.

David Segal (17:22):
Wow.

Ed Sonshine (17:22):
Because it was done at eight and three quarters percent. A year later I could do them at 4%. So it was worth it paying the penalty. [00:17:30] So these guys who bought that bond made out like bandits.

Harley Finkelstein (17:33):
Of course. (Song)

David Segal (17:36):
Now you're going to hear from Charles Bronfman, whose family founded Seagram's, and he brought the Montreal Expos to Canada, and he's been a philanthropist throughout the world. (Song).

(17:46):
Another little fun sort of aside in the book is you talk a lot about Heritage Minutes and heritage fairs, which by the way, I asked my 12-year-old daughter, I'm like, "did you have a Heritage Fair last year?" And she did. It's still going on. But in that [00:18:00] conversation, there's this funny part where you, I believe, were backing the Canadian - was it the CFB?

Harley Finkelstein (18:06):
CF Canada Film Board.

David Segal (18:09):
Film board. Which funded Degrassi. Which is where Drake -

Harley Finkelstein (18:14):
Became Drake.

David Segal (18:15):
Became Drake, got his start, which is a huge, huge success in -

Harley Finkelstein (18:20):
Well, actually just before we finish, let's talk just quickly about the Heritage Minute thing. Because again, country, industry, company, that first one, country, I agree. [00:18:30] I mean, like you, I've spent a lot of time, I grew up in Canada, but I also lived in the US for quite some time and went to high school in the US. So I understand that Canada is a very special place. I've chosen to live here, but Canadians are not necessarily always proud of this country as they should be. I load that I talk about that. You actually did something about it. Talk a little bit about why the Heritage Minute thing was even -

Charles Bronfman (18:54):
Well, I also, was in Canada, I was in the States, it was back and forth. And [00:19:00] at one point in the eighties, I said, "the real religion of Americans is love of country." I don't ever think that Canadians should be like Americans, but we don't have any passion for our country.

(19:16):
And that's when I came up with the thought that a society is composed of heroes, heroines and myths. And don't forget the myths because they're important. And we don't have any except [00:19:30] Laura Secord and her damn cow. But there's got to be a lot of stuff here. And the Americans did bicentennial operation. They had stuff on TV. I think they're also one-minute things.

(19:45):
I came back to Canada and I banged my fist on the table. I said, "guys, this is what we're going to do." And Tom Axworthy, who was then running our foundation, he had been the principal secretary [00:20:00] to Pierre Trudeau. He got hold of Patrick Watson, who just passed away, is a wonderful guy. And Michael Levine in Toronto, who was a business end of life. And we started the Heritage Minutes. And it was just that simple. They were simple like hell. It wasn't so simple. We went to Ottawa and fortunately it was not considered [00:20:30] advertising. Secondly, the CRTC, Canadian Radio and Television Commission gave points for Canadian content. This was Canadian content.

Harley Finkelstein (20:46):
Which helps the American agent networks, right?

Charles Bronfman (20:48):
Right. And so this became a come on to the GV stations to run it. Then at the time, we owned - [00:21:00] what the heck was the name of the chain of Movie Houses?

Harley Finkelstein (21:04):
Cineplex.

Charles Bronfman (21:05):
Yes. We own Cineplex.

David Segal (21:06):
Do you own Cineplex?

Charles Bronfman (21:06):
Yeah, we own Cineplex.

Harley Finkelstein (21:08):
It's a footnote.

David Segal (21:09):
It's not even in the book. Didn't even make a Footnote.

Charles Bronfman (21:11):
Didn't make the book. Wasn't that successful. Why talk about it?

David Segal (21:17):
I mean, it is today.

Charles Bronfman (21:20):
So anyway, we ran them in Cineplexes because we insisted, as I insist on everything, but quality. [00:21:30] And so the Heritage Minutes were made for movie quality, where others are just TV quality, and they took off.

Harley Finkelstein (21:40):
Amazing.

David Segal (21:41):
For people listening. I mean, my favorite one you talk about is James Naismith, the Canadian invented basketball. And you talk about Canadians being able to go down and visit their American cousins and say, "Hey, guess what? That game you love, it's on us. We made that happen." And I laughed. That was literally me. I'd go visit my cousins [00:22:00] in Boston, and I'd brag about it all day long. It was great. (Song)

Harley Finkelstein (22:07):
Now you're going to hear from Aldo Bensadoun, the founder of Aldo Shoes.

(22:15):
Dave and I, in our research, figured this out, which is fascinating because up until that point, very few Canadian retailers were able to expand successfully to the US.

David Segal (22:24):
Yeah.

Harley Finkelstein (22:24):
Not only did you think about doing so, you did so successfully.

David Segal (22:28):
Yeah.

Harley Finkelstein (22:28):
That to us had also showed [00:22:30] a lot of chutzpah and a lot of ambition. Tell us about that.

David Segal (22:33):
How did you do it?

Harley Finkelstein (22:33):
How'd you do it? All your predecessors failed at that.

Aldo Bensadoun (22:37):
Basically, again, it's a question of encouragement by people and things like that. And I remember, what's his name? A big brand in United States, Stuart Wiseman.

Harley Finkelstein (22:52):
Yup.

Aldo Bensadoun (22:53):
So Stuart Wiseman came to visit us in Montreal, and we were looking, showing him my collection and [00:23:00] what we were doing, et cetera. And Stuart said to us, he said, "Aldo, those shoes are fantastic. Your price point is great. I don't understand why you don't go to the States." So he really encouraged us in opening in the States.

David Segal (23:16):
And he was already in the States.

Aldo Bensadoun (23:18):
Oh yeah, yeah. He had a big brand, yeah.

David Segal (23:21):
So he encouraged you?

Aldo Bensadoun (23:23):
And so what we did is that we opened. We didn't want to take a big risk because [00:23:30] at that time, we saw so many people failing.

David Segal (23:34):
Everyone had failed.

Harley Finkelstein (23:37):
It was Chateau.

Aldo Bensadoun (23:38):
I know.

David Segal (23:38):
Twice they tried it.

Aldo Bensadoun (23:40):
So what we did is that we opened in Plattsburgh and in Plattsburgh Shopping center, which is now -

David Segal (23:46):
Right around the corner, yeah.

Aldo Bensadoun (23:48):
Yeah. We open and we tried to ship and to make sure that the logistic was working. And after a year and a half, we decided to open in Boston.

Harley Finkelstein (24:00):
[00:24:00] How were the sales in Plattsburgh? Was it -

Aldo Bensadoun (24:02):
They were pretty good. We didn't make much money, but we didn't pay too much rent.

David Segal (24:05):
Right, but the Plattsburgh idea was really, let's test the model. Let's figure out how shipping -

Aldo Bensadoun (24:11):
Let's test the model as far as the shipping, the logistics and everything.

David Segal (24:13):
Then you go to Boston. I mean, it wasn't just smooth sailing from there all to Broadway, New York, right?

Aldo Bensadoun (24:18):
No, no. Well, again, it's a question of luck. Remember? You see our expansion today, we are operating about 350 store in the United States. And at [00:24:30] one point two years ago before Covid, it was like 450. And we closed quite a few store. But so when we moved, it was a question of luck in the sense that there was a lot of shopping center opening. The Tubman and the Simons, they were opening all kinds of shopping center, and they would come to us and say, they have to fill it up.

David Segal (24:57):
Sure.

Aldo Bensadoun (24:59):
So they would give [00:25:00] us great condition terms, and that's how we expanded if you want.

Harley Finkelstein (25:06):
Wow.

David Segal (25:06):
And so it's mostly mall, not street front?

Aldo Bensadoun (25:09):
Malls. Yeah.

David Segal (25:10):
Malls. That was your game.

Aldo Bensadoun (25:10):
It's mostly mall. Yeah. Yeah. 95%. I mean 98%.

David Segal (25:15):
And why did you decide at one point to launch multiple brands? So you had the Aldo brand.

Aldo Bensadoun (25:21):
Yeah.

David Segal (25:21):
And then there's Little Burgundy, there's Spring, there's a bunch of brands.

Aldo Bensadoun (25:25):
Yeah. I mean basically, I mean, [00:25:30] it is different way of running the business, but we feel that, let's say with Aldo, we were catering to or focusing on one group of consumer. Then on spring, or Call it Spring, we're focusing on another one. With Global, we focusing on another one. So each one has a different market. Now [00:26:00] other people think differently. If you look at Apple, if you look at, they don't.

Harley Finkelstein (26:08):
It's kind of a one size fits all.

Aldo Bensadoun (26:09):
Exactly.

David Segal (26:10):
Nike.

Aldo Bensadoun (26:11):
Yeah, Nike.

David Segal (26:14):
And did you bring all those brands into the US as well, or US is only Aldo?

Aldo Bensadoun (26:18):
Right now it's only Aldo. But before we used to have the other brand.

David Segal (26:22):
So you went Plattsburgh, Boston.

Aldo Bensadoun (26:23):
And then New York.

David Segal (26:24):
And then New York.

Aldo Bensadoun (26:26):
Well, I mean, what happened is also we were in the States [00:26:30] and we were doing well. We were also, I can't remember, I'm not sure now. Anyway, we started in Canada, and then at one point we had fellow Sam Nezri, that used to work at Max in Canada. And he decided to make Aliyah to Israel. And he left and went to Israel. [00:27:00] And maybe three, four years after he arrived in Israel, he came back to Canada. Came to visit me, and he said, "look, I looked, I studied the market, and I think that there is room to open store, Aldo store, in Israel." And I said, "really?" I mean, so anyway, we had a good talk, but after maybe a day or [00:27:30] something like that, I said to him, "fine, you could open the store." And I checked here and I said to myself, I said, "what happens if he fails in Israel, nobody would know."

David Segal (27:46):
Right. Small country.

Aldo Bensadoun (27:47):
Israel country is very far.

David Segal (27:48):
Yeah.

Aldo Bensadoun (27:48):
And so he opened his store and today he has, between Spring and Aldo, he has close to 80 or 90 store.

Harley Finkelstein (27:57):
Wow.

David Segal (27:58):
And you kept him as the -

Aldo Bensadoun (27:59):
And [00:28:00] so then you say, you're doing well in Israel, you're doing well in Canada, might as well open in Dubai. You might as well open in Philippine, Portugal and et cetera, et cetera. (Song)

David Segal (28:16):
Now you, you're going to hear from Jonathan Wener, the founder of Candarel, one of Canada's largest development companies.

(28:23):
The thing that struck us as incredible is that 52 years in the business, in a business where people sue each other, left, right, and center, [00:28:30] you've never been in a lawsuit.

Harley Finkelstein (28:31):
So when David told me this, I said, Dave, I think you should go back. There is no way that in 50 years of business that there has not been a major lawsuit.

Jonathan Wener (28:38):
There's not.

Harley Finkelstein (28:39):
There's not been. How can that be?

Jonathan Wener (28:40):
There was one that was a situation, and it wasn't me in particular. It was the whole joint venture. So us alone, we haven't had that. The joint venture, we had a building that we bought with the Caisse de dépôt [00:29:00] in Fort Worth, Texas. It was the size of the Royal Trust. Well, you would know it now as the Telus building across from [inaudible 00:29:09].

David Segal (29:09):
Which I hear is a story in and of itself, which we should come back.

Jonathan Wener (29:11):
It's a great story. Actually. It's one of the best. It got hit by a tornado. We had bought it for $35 million. And imagine a 600,000 foot 30 story building got hit by a tornado [00:29:30] and obliterated.

David Segal (29:32):
Wow.

Jonathan Wener (29:32):
Obliterated. Okay? Furniture was five city blocks away.

David Segal (29:37):
Oh my goodness.

Jonathan Wener (29:38):
The sprinkler heads had been ripped off. The water was flowing everywhere. We thought we would rebuild. We didn't rebuild because the building was condemned. Because there's a rule that if you have more than a 50% destruction, you must meet the current code. And it was impossible to meet the current [00:30:00] code.

Harley Finkelstein (30:00):
With the old structures?

Jonathan Wener (30:01):
With the old structure. And so the building could fit for an apartment building, but it couldn't work as office. We ended up having an offer of settlement of $85 million.

Harley Finkelstein (30:16):
Not too shabby.

Jonathan Wener (30:20):
Not too bad. But in there, there was a club, and they went after [00:30:30] us for a lawsuit for three and a half million bucks. We went to them and said - actually it was six and a half million. We said, "we'll give you three and a half million. We just don't want a lawsuit." We've made enough money on this we don't need. And in our shop, we say "a bad settlement's better than a good judgment", because you never know with a judge where it's going to end up.

Harley Finkelstein (30:58):
A bad settlement's better than a good judge. I love that.

Jonathan Wener (31:00):
[00:31:00] So long story, it went on for three years. Both sides spent 3 million a piece on legals.

David Segal (31:10):
But wait, they only wanted three and you were offering 6 million?

Harley Finkelstein (31:13):
No, no, they wanted six. He offered three.

David Segal (31:14):
Ah, Okay.

Jonathan Wener (31:16):
So we both spent three on legals and we ended up settling for the same thing.

David Segal (31:21):
Right.

Harley Finkelstein (31:21):
Incredible. That's the only lawsuit.