Ketupa.net a media industry resource
Home › Media & Advertising groups › Broadcast, Film and Publishing groups

Power, Pargesa and Gesca

Overview

This page looks at the Desmarais and Power Corporation's media interests.


It covers -

  • introduction
  • the group
  • the founder
  • publishing
  • broadcast
  • studies

Introduction

Power Corporation of Canada, controlled by the Desmarais family, is a conglomerate with broadcasting, publishing and financial services interests. It claims to be Canada's number one French-language newspaper group and through Pargesa had a 25% stake in Bertelsmann as of 2005.

Through Gesca Ltée it publishes La Presse and three other daily newspapers in Québec, with other titles in Ontario. Gesca has book-publishing operations and formerly operated television and radio stations in Québec and Ontario. Power also had a major interest in the Southam newspaper chain, sold to Conrad Black's Hollinger.

The Power group's non-media interests include controlling stakes in Great-West Lifeco, IMG Financial and Pargesa Holding S.A (as of 2005 the latter had substantial investments in Bertelsmann, Total, Suez and other groups).

It formerly embraced shipping and shipbuilding, road transport and other interests. It also had substantial pulp, paper and packaging interests through Consolidated-Bathurst Inc, a major Canadian pulp and paper producer. The Consolidated-Bathurst holding was sold to Stone Container for C$2.6 billion (a 50% premium over its stock market capitalisation) at the height of the Canadian resources boom in 1989. By 2006 Abitibi-Consolidated, North America's largest newsprint producer through the mergers of Donohue (formerly controlled by Quebecor), Abitibi-Price and Stone-Consolidated, had a market capitalisation of C$2.2 billion.

In 1989 Power also sold its controlling stake in Montreal Trust to BCE, which unloaded the financier to Scotiabank at a loss several years later.

The group

[under development]

An indication of the holdings is here.

The founder

Paul Desmarais (1927- ) studied at the University of Ottawa and McGill before working for Montréal accounting firm Courtois, Fredette et Cie. In 1951 he began working in the family's Sudbury-based bus company and a decade later gained control of Provincial Transport.

In 1965 Desmarais took a controlling stake in Trans-Canada Corp Fund and hence control of Montréal's major French-language newspaper La Presse, the dominant francophone radio station CKAC, Imperial Life assurance in Toronto and other daily and weekly newspapers.

In 1968 Desmarais moved to control of conglomerate Power Corporation, established in the 1920s as a hydroelectricity producer. Power's interests grew to encompass two of Canada's major mutual fund and trust funds (Investors Group and Montreal Trust), life assurance (notably Great-West Life), financial services and energy in Europe (Pargesa) and paper (Consolidated-Bathurst).

Publishing

[under development]

Broadcasting

Power Broadcasting, the conglomerate's radio and television arm (three commercial television stations and 17 radio stations), was sold to Corus Entertainment Inc. in 2000 for C$107.5 million.

Power's joint venture with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) - launched in 1993 - was sold to USA Networks Inc. for C$155 million in 2000. The partnership encompassed two US-based satellite-cable channels.

Studies

Desmarais is profiled in David Greber's Rising to Power: Paul Desmarais & Power Corporation (Toronto: Methuen 1987).

For Power's early years see Keith Fleming's Power at Cost: Ontario Hydro and Rural Electrification, 1911-1958 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's Uni Press 1992) and Neil Freeman's The Politics of Power: Ontario Hydro and Its Government, 1906-1995 (Toronto: Uni of Toronto Press 1996). Samuel Insull features in Forrest McDonald's Insull (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 1962)

For CSL see Marci McDonald's 2004 Walrus article.