For Sale: Corporate Canada

The Connaught controversy marked one of the periodic episodes of hollowing-out fever that grips the Canadian psyche. Today, a frenzy of romantic longing is building up around Falconbridge, Inco, ATI, Dofasco, Vincor and other Canadian icons that are being lost in a paroxysm of global consolidation. Yet the Connaught story also demonstrates how feeble and futile this nostalgia can be. Corporate names come and go; high-level jobs are shuffled. The Toronto Stock Exchange may lose a listing or two, and institutional investors hunt more feverishly for portfolio balance. But new opportunities emerge, and, assuming the country continues to turn out smart, postsecondary graduates, this talent and free capital will reaggregate around a new group of companies. Sure, the loss of Connaught meant a little less swagger on the world stage. But could it have survived and thrived as a standalone? “There would certainly be issues around the funding of R&D,” says Mark Lievonen, the 23-year company veteran who runs the Canadian arm of Sanofi Pasteur. In fact, the hope for vaccine discoveries now lies with smaller, nimbler firms, argues geneticist Robert Church, a professor emeritus from the University of Calgary, who led a futile bid in 1989 to keep Connaught's head office in Canada (although with investment backing from Singapore). http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060908.wxr-hollow-main09/BNStory/Business/home#

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