Conrad Black: facing his own Waterloo?

by Jean-Louis Pany

Monday, January 19, 2004

MONTREAL, Canada (AFP): Conrad Black, an audacious and some say ruthless businessman, turned his back on his native Canada to become a British lord and make London the home for what was once the world's third largest newspaper empire, including a daily newspaper in the Cayman Islands

Renowned for his fanatical knowledge of Napoleon's campaigns and military history, the 59-year-old Lord Black of Crossharbour, as he is now known, must now rethink his own tactics after being forced to stand down as head of his Hollinger International group.

Black was ousted Saturday as chairman of Hollinger International media group by a special committee that has also filed a suit to recover 200 million dollars in unauthorised payments to Black and others.

His empire, which also includes the prestigious British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post and the Chicago Sun-Times, may now be sold.

But Black has shown from his own history that he is always ready for a fight, taking on prime ministers and fellow media magnates in the past.

Born into a wealthy family, his father was a Toronto brewing executive. Young Conrad showed his business acumen at an early age through involvement in an enterprise selling exam papers that saw him expelled from school.

He left home at 18 but went to university to study history, a passion he would never lose. While buying up newspapers, Black wrote an acclaimed biography of Maurice Duplessis, one of Quebec's most brilliant leaders.

He has also written about Napoleon. And for the last four years he has been working on a huge biography of US president Franklin Roosevelt.

Black was 25 when he purchased his first newspaper, the Sherbrooke Record, a small weekly that had fallen into debt. Two years later, he added about 20 Canadian newspapers in the Sterling company chain.

At the age of 33, Black took over Argus Corp., which controlled farm machinery maker Massey-Ferguson, alongside Domtar newspapers and mining and other interests.

Black went on and on, and at one stage controlled more than half of Canada's newspapers -- buying up titles in trouble, then selling assets and downsizing.

Even those who criticized his methods had to admit his papers soon returned to profitability.

Black took control of the Daily Telegraph in 1985 for a knockdown price, taking advantage of the problems of the family that ran the leading voice of British conservatism.

Black beat fellow magnate Rupert Murdoch to the Telegraph and has kept it consistently ahead of Murdoch's The Times in Britain's broadsheet circulation war.

He became a friend of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher and influential within the ruling Conservative Party.

The Jerusalem Post and the Chicago Sun-Times and briefly some Australian newspapers were added to the stable and Black also founded the National Post in a bid to establish a voice of conservatism in Canada.

But Black loved Britain and its respectability. When in 1999 the Conservative Party proposed him for a seat in the House of Lords, it brought Black into confrontation with his old rival Jean Chretien, Canada's then-prime minister.

Chretien used an old law giving him a right of veto over foreign titles to stop Black getting the peerage. So Black renounced his Canadian citizenship and become a British passport holder after selling off most of his Canadian media empire -- which was also becoming a serious drain on his finances.

Black's second wife is Barbara Amiel, an American columnist also based in London.

The couple lives like billionaires with homes in New York and the Caribbean. But his troubles with Hollinger reflect his need for cash. 

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