New Oilers owner Daryl Katz a private man relentless in bid to buy team

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/02/2008 (6824 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

EDMONTON – He is the tousle-haired, publicity-shy philanthropist and billionaire pharmacy baron who, when given the chance to own his favourite hockey team, became a bull mastiff with a chew toy.

“I’m one of those who is old enough to have gone through the five Stanley Cups. The Boys on the Bus were a big part of my life and I lived and died by the Oilers for a number of those years,” Daryl Katz said Wednesday in a conference call.

“From my point of view this couldn’t be better.”

Katz was given control of the NHL team, pending league approval, after the Edmonton Investors Group agreed to sell all its shares to the 46-year-old in the C$200-million deal.

Katz is the hometown boy who made good but didn’t leave.

He was raised in Edmonton and went to school at the University of Alberta, getting a law degree in the’80s.

In’92, he and his father bought the Canadian franchise rights to Medicine Shoppe. By shrewdly acquiring and developing undervalued assets Katz has built a pharmacy empire that now comprises 1,800 stores and 15,000 employees in North America.

He has given $7 million to the pharmacy section of the university, and cut cheques to bail out a local lottery that was struggling to sell tickets to help needy children. He jumped in help underwrite the city’s Champ Car Grand Prix road race and supports an annual golf tournament to help sick children.

His personal worth is estimated at $2 billion. He and his wife and twin children live in a $20-million mansion in the city’s river valley, complete with two swimming pools and 11 bathrooms.

Katz is known for keeping a low profile. His corporate bio contains few details and no birthdate. During the Oiler negotiations, he communicated publicly only through intermediaries or by e-mail.

He said now that the deal is done, there is still some hand-wringing.

“(The attention) concerns my wife, I can tell you that. But I understand the Oilers are a public asset and there is a public component to owning the team.

“At the same time I plan to leave the management of the team and its public communications to the management.”

Sam Abouhassan, an Edmonton tailor, businessman and friend of Katz’s for 20 years, said Katz had season tickets to the Oilers all through their Stanley Cup years in the’80s and lived and breathed the exploits of greats like Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier.

Abouhassan said two years ago he and Katz golfed with Gretzky near Phoenix. He golfed. They talked hockey.

“The whole conversation was about winning the Stanley Cups and all the good glory days in Edmonton – on the golf course and after the golf course,” he said.

Abouhassan said Katz is happiest when alone with family and friends.

“He’s much more’s more comfortable in a smaller gathering than in a larger gathering. He enjoys the one-on-one conversation.”

The purchase concluded a 10-month roller-coaster ride that Katz said began when some EIG owners approached him to buy in.

He pitched $145 million, then $150 million, making it clear that he was in it to run the Oilers, not be part of a hydra-headed group.

The first bids were considered by the EIG board as too puny to even take to investors. By the summer, he offered more than $170 million, splitting the owners between those who wanted to stay and those who wanted to cash in.

It wasn’t enough. The investors rejected the bid and passed a separate motion to effectively tell Katz to back off.

“The Oilers are not for sale,” said then-chairman Cal Nichols. “An ownership group is best suited for Edmonton and the Oilers.”

Not for long.

By mid-December, Katz was back, this time with a tipping-point bid of $188 million. Nichols quit as board chairman, promised to sell to Katz and urged others to do so, setting in motion the last-minute scrambling by a splinter group of investors to match Katz’s offer.

But as they hustled to find the extra cash, Katz returned in mid-January with a coup de grace bid of $200 million – doubling the original investment for the owners.

Game over.