Canadian Businessman and Philanthropist
CM (born January 6, 1940 in Montreal, Quebec)
Seymour Schulich graduated from McGill University with a B.Sc. in 1961 and an MBA in 1965. He earned a Chartered Financial Analyst degree through the University of Virginia in 1969.
His first job was at Shell Oil Company and from 1968 to 1990, he worked at Beutel, Goodman & Company Ltd., a pension fund management company which manages in excess of $10.6 billion CAD (as of 2003), becoming president and Vice-Chairman.
In 1978, Schulich, along with partner Pierre Lassonde, helped pioneer the concept of royalty payments in the mining industry: their Franco-Nevada and Euro-Nevada companies never discovered an ounce of precious minerals, but their royalty arrangements allowed them to gain ownership stakes in some of the world’s most profitable mines. A $1,000 investment in Franco-Nevada’s stock in 1983 was worth $1.2 million in 2002, equivalent to a 40% average annual rate of return. In 2002, Franco-Nevada merged with Normandy Mining Limited of Australia and Newmont Mining Corporation, creating the largest gold mining company in the world, Newmont Mining Corporation. Schulich is Director of Newmont Mining and Chairman of its merchant banking division
Schulich is one of Canada’s most astute investors. A recent example of his skill as an investor is his purchase of Canadian Oil Sands Trust.
In early 2004 Schulich studied the outlook for oil and concluded that because demand for oil was rising faster than supply, the price of oil would rise and hold those higher prices for years. Schulich looked at Canadian oil companies and decided to buy units of Canadian Oil Sands Trust because it was the country’s oil company “most leveraged” to the rising price of oil he saw in the future. At his forecast higher prices for oil, Schulich calculated that he was buying $1 of oil assets for every .25 cents he invested. “I bought this thing to make four times my money in three years,” he said. Schulich purchased 12.5 million units of Canadian Oil Sands Trust at an average price of $8.80 per unit for a total of $110 million CAD (number of units and price/unit split adjusted.) “It’s my single largest investment,” said Schulich. At the end of 2007 the value of that investment in Canadian Oils Sands Trust had risen to over $480 million CAD.