Meet Tim Hodgson, the new energy minister Mark Carney hopes can bridge the gap with the West
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There's a story about Tim Hodgson's legendary tenacity from his investment banking days at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
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In 1997, so the story goes, Hodgson was working in Goldman's Canadian corporate finance group in New York when he caught wind of a hostile takeover bid being made for Wascana Energy Inc., then one of Canada's largest oil and gas producers.
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Goldman prided itself on defending companies subject to hostile takeovers and Hodgson began trying to get a meeting with the leaders of the Saskatchewan-headquartered company to try to convince them to hire his firm.
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'Apparently, they wouldn't take Tim's call,' Simon Bregazzi, who worked at Goldman with Hodgson years later, said. 'So, he flew to Regina and just parked in reception until they would take a meeting. Apparently, he was there for days, until finally the CEO was just like, 'F— it. OK, fine. I'll meet with this guy.''
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Former Wascana chief executive Frank Proto doesn't remember anyone camping out in the lobby, but he does remember Hodgson.
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'He was focused, he was aggressive; he was very sharp,' Proto recalled, noting Hodgson ultimately helped Wascana secure a $1.7-billion offer from white knight Canadian Occidental Petroleum Ltd., which later became Nexen Inc. 'We ended up with a substantially better deal.'
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Nearly 30 years later, Hodgson's tenacity and dealmaking prowess are about to be put to an even bigger test.
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Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney tapped the rookie member of Parliament to be Canada's minister of natural resources, making him the Liberals' point person on energy and a key intermediary with the West.
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Carney has pledged to make Canada an 'energy superpower' and to take a different approach to energy and resource development than predecessor Justin Trudeau, but skepticism is high in oil-rich Alberta and Saskatchewan, where Carney's track record of environmental advocacy has raised fears that his tenure will bring more of the same.
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Separatist sentiment has been rising and premiers Danielle Smith and Scott Moe have aggressively moved to freeze or scrap the federally regulated industrial carbon tax, thereby putting both provinces on a collision course with Ottawa.
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