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How Biographer Quentin Casey Lifted the Veil on John Risley’s Business Empire

Aug 6, 2023 | Business

By Avery Mullen

“I just cannot understand how, financially, this makes any bit of sense for you,” Clearwater Seafoods co-founder John Risley told biographer Quentin Casey while being interviewed for Casey’s new book, Net Worth.

Casey, a former Financial Post reporter and the author of two other non-fiction books, is the latest in a line of writers to try persuading Risley to be interviewed for a biography, but the first to actually succeed. In fact, the high-profile entrepreneur sat for a remarkable 12 interviews for the project.

Risley’s questions about the financial viability of a biography — which he repeated at least a dozen times as Casey was authoring the book — are perhaps emblematic of what Casey describes as the inherent contradictions of writing about Risley. The seafood magnate turned technocrat’s associates describe him variously as “obsessed with money” and “terrified of failure,” but also generous and pro-social.

Former Financial Post journalist and author Quentin Casey speaks with retired CTV News anchor Steve Murphy during a book launch Wednesday. Casey described Clearwater Seafoods co-founder John Risley as “very much a straight shooter,” albeit one with a history of contentious business dealings and an unusual penchant for risk.

Risley, for example, has been partnering with Mi’kmaw First Nations on profit-sharing seafood ventures since as early as 1988, decades before reconciliation became a social and political focus in Canada. And at least as recently as 2021, he was financially supporting much of his extended family, even including his daughter’s ex-husband.

“I think he sees the value in telling a full, rounded story, and that you don’t learn anything if it’s congratulatory, celebratory, high level,” said Casey during a book launch Wednesday at the Old Triangle Pub in Halifax. “The value is in the ups and downs, the disappoints, the failures, the tension

Cathy Little, left, with Crestview Strategy vice president Robyn McIsaac, middle. and Crestview senior consultant Dale Palmeter. Crestview’s Halifax office has been managing the launch of Net Worth.

“I don’t think it’s myth-making, because if he wanted to do that, he could have done it a long time ago on his terms. It’s a cliche, but I think he is very much a straight shooter.”

During an hour-long conversation with former CTV News anchor Steve Murphy, Casey said Ridley never sought editorial control over Net Worth, even though it details not just his business exploits, but also several of his personal disagreements and private foibles.

In fact, Murphy said Net Worth doubles as an “incidental biography” of Clearwater co-founder and former Risley in-law Colin MacDonald because it explores the two men’s relationship in such detail.

Nimbus Publishing co-owner and general manager Terrilee Bulger, whose company released Net Worth, left, with husband Joe Tinney, who runs independent bookseller Open Book Coffee.

Risley, a Halifax native born to a military police officer in the wake of the Second World War, began his career as a real estate agent. In 1976, faced with a market slump, he opened Clearwater with his brother-in-law, Macdonald.

What started as a small lobster store in a former Bedford restaurant went on to pioneer the practice of exporting Nova Scotia lobsters to Europe and Asia, increasing the size of the industry’s addressable market by an order of magnitude, before being sold to a consortium of First Nations buyers for $1 billion in 2020. Accounting for the company’s pre-existing $450 million of debt, Clearwater shareholders made about $550 million on the deal.

Pernille Fischer Boulter, CEO of export development consultancy Kisserup International Trade Roots, speaks at the launch of John Risley biography Net Worth Wednesday. Originally from Denmark, Boulter said the mentorship she received from Risley after she came to Canada has been crucial to her success in business. Her company also co-hosted the book launch alongside Toronto’s Crestview Strategy.

Part of what makes Risley’s empire noteworthy, though, is the diversity of his business interests. In 1997, with Clearwater still growing fast, Risley founded a second company, Ocean Nutrition Canada, which sold Omega-3 supplements and was ultimately purchased in 2012 by Dutch life sciences giant DSM for $540 million.

And in 2004, Risley co-founded Bahamian telecom Columbia Communications with another Atlantic Canadian entrepreneur, Newfoundland and Labrador’s Brendan Paddick. Through a series of acquisitions, followed by infrastructure upgrades, the duo brought high-speed broadband internet to large tracts of the Caribbean that previously had spotty web access at best. Just 11 years later, they sold the business to a London, U.K.-based buyer for US$1.85 billion, or about C$2.47 billion at today’s exchange rate.

Nimbus publishing non-fiction editor Angela Mombourquette, left, with Net Worth author Quentin Casey and publicist Kate Watson at Casey’s book launch Wednesday.

That spectacular, but seemingly dissimilar series of successes reflects Risley’s extraordinary risk tolerance, said Casey, who described him as perpetually hungry for new business deals, sometimes to the point of impulsivity.

“Colin went down to investigate a shrimp plant, I think, in Delaware (that Risley had bought), but it was just a dumpy little plant,” said Casey. “He called John and he said, ‘What is this?’

“And (Risley)’s like, ‘I don’t know. I didn’t look at it, I just bought it.’”

That discord may have contributed to the two men’s eventual falling out. MacDonald grew increasingly frustrated by a series of expensive investments that Risley was making from a joint account without telling him the details, along with a general commingling of their funds. In one particularly contentious instance, the duo argued about their respective stakes in CFFI Ventures — a venture capital shop Risley created in 2005, which has gone on to back promising Nova Scotia startups like marine coatings maker Graphite Innovations & Technology and equipment rental platform Frenter.

Because CFFI was founded using shared resources, MacDonald was supposed to be entitled to a 50 percent stake. But a breakdown in communications about the types of shares each man controlled and the exact structure of the company led MacDonald to conclude he actually owned just 12 percent of CFFI.

Ahmad Hussein is the CEO of Nile Fiber Atlantic Canada, which produces alternative forms of biomass to replace tree materials in the fibre industry. Unlike conventional fibre sources for textiles and other industrial applications, the plants used to produce Nile Fiber’s product can be grown in locations where they do not interfere with food production, such as reclaimed mining sites.

In 2010, a drastically reworked partnership agreement temporarily salvaged their working relationship and produced a new contract that MacDonald would later refer to as “a thick f—ing novel.” But by 2015, with Risley and MacDonald once again butting heads about the terms of their partnership, MacDonald walked away. He left with $350 million, and Risley kept the remaining $650 million of their shared assets.

“Colin said, ‘I don’t have an axe to grind,’ and then five minutes later he’s saying, ‘The reason I speak so freely is because of what he’s doing to my sister,” said Casey of his conversations with MacDonald. “So that’s really, I think, his motivation.

“I think he wants people to know there’s more to this guy than what they think there is, and he hasn’t always treated people the best.”

The sister in question was Risley’s wife, Judith. The couple divorced in 2013, with the ugly and extraordinarily public aftermath of their split culminating in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court last year ordering Risley to pay her $10 million that he still owed from their original, $150 million settlement.

Former Financial Post journalist and author Quentin Casey speaks with retired CTV News anchor Steve Murphy during a book launch Wednesday. Casey described Clearwater Seafoods co-founder John Risley as “very much a straight shooter,” albeit one with a history of contentious business dealings and an unusual penchant for risk.

The discord in the Risley family has also extended to his two children, although not as spectacularly or with the level of acrimony that has characterized some of his other relationships.

“There was one Christmas where he announced to the family the new boat they were going to get, but they all turned on him because it was a much bigger boat, it would need a crew, they couldn’t sail it themselves, and they instinctively knew this was going to bring more people into their lives,” said Casey.

Michael, Risley’s son, feels the family lost a bit of its intimacy when the world just got too big. He grew up in a house in East Chester, and he says he remembers not thinking, ‘Geez, I wish I had a bigger house.’ But the flip side is he now lives in a huge house in L.A. that his dad bought. It’s complicated.”

As the title of Casey’s book suggests, however, it may be the question of Risley’s net worth that best highlights the complexities of biographizing him. Risley has long been characterized in the media as a billionaire, and in years past, invitations to startup pitch competitions where he has been a judge have even explicitly described him as such. Also doing little to refute the notion is his reputation for conspicuous consumption, buttressed by several mansions, private jets and a yacht reportedly worth about US$350 million.

The reality is more complicated. Risley has helped build multi-billion-dollar companies and managed assets in the billions, but his personal ownership stakes have been less than the headline numbers.

“It’s rather like the King of England: there’s never been five pounds in his pocket, but he’s not a pauper,” said Steve Murphy during the book launch. “Risley doesn’t want to be labelled a billionaire because it targets him, but the actions speak louder than words. It smacks of being a billionaire.”

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