The Real Bill Comrie?

This may seem a bit long but I assure you; it's worth the read.
It's from the most valuable book on my shelf.

From; BANKSTERS AND PRAIRIE BOYS by MONIER RAHALL

CHAPTER 9;

THE END OF THE EARTH SALE

"Don't pay until the new Millennium"

"Greed has been severely underestimated and denigrated. There is nothing wrong
with avarice as a motive as long as it doesn't lead to anti-social behavior."
- Conrad Black


Maybe you've heard about Bill Commie. If not, you've probably heard about his business, the Brick Warehouse furniture store chain. Bill is also well-known for his dedication to service, but there is a side to Mr. Bill that you probably aren't aware of. That character is Mr. Bill Comrie, beneficiary of the great Alberta Treasury Branches loan system and Alberta government largesse. Mr. Comrie has suckled at the teat of the government for so long and so comfortably that they are unable to wean him.
Here's the story of an Edmonton apartment complex called Whitehall Square, one of those Alberta Treasury Branches' disaster relief funds that even the United Nations would envy. The deal to refinance the project was structured in a way to deceive Albertans covering up who was really involved in the loan. A numbered company of Mr. Comrie's (307657 Alberta Ltd.) was set up to facilitate the deal with mortgages through the Alberta Treasury Branches--specifically an 18 million dollar mortgage and another for approximately 4 million dollars. A prominent lawyer at the law firm of Bryan & Company and Tory fund contributor, Mr. Mike Crozier, is shown on the annual return as the numbered company's sole shareholder. (Bryan & Company is also the law firm of my Trustee--probably not important.) Why would a straightforward, honest arrangement need this simple deception of a numbered company? The project was financed for approximately 125% of its true value at the time. Mr. Comrie was certainly headed for disaster. The only question that remained was when? Those ever-vigilant guardians of the public purse at the Alberta Treasury Branches elected to implement a soft receivership while allowing Mr. Comrie to continue to run the property as the receiver. This does not fall within proper or normal banking guidelines. The capturing of cash flow is the first order of business in a foreclosure receivership.
A receiver has a legal obligation to act fairly and impartially. Mr. Comrie failed the test because he was in a conflict of interest, and his actions undermined the secured creditor for his
own personal gain; thereby violating his responsibility as an official receiver. In this case, not only did Mr. Comrie receive an enormous fee to act as property manager, he knew very well that his actions had crossed the line when he then replaced all the appliances in the project bought and paid for from the Brick Warehouse. In all fairness to Mr. Comrie, the Brick Warehouse was the place with the highest prices.
How could anyone, let alone Mr. Comrie, be allowed to get away with something like this? Not only did he rape the project initially with the over-financing and the placing of the two
mortgages, but he did it again on the way out, and the Alberta Treasury Branches never realized on any personal guarantees. Mr. Comrie's actions were absolutely amoral and he should have been held accountable; but he knew that the Premier at the time, Donald Getty, would not allow Mr. Comrie to suffer any repercussions for illicit conduct.


Have you ever gone to a fast food restaurant and complained about the fries only to have them replaced by more bad fries? In order to rectify the damage that Mr. Comrie had done with Whitehall, the Alberta Treasury Branches sold the project to the Ghermezian family. There was no money down and extremely soft terms in the form of a preferential interest rate. Well, lo and behold, the Ghermezians got into a little trouble with their new acquisition, Whitehall Square, and so to remedy this, the ATB added another 5 million dollars in debt to the project, bringing the total to 27 million dollars. (Oh, by the way, the lawyer on this deal for ATB was Mark Gunderson, and the branch was First Edmonton Place--hardly a surprise.)
Four months after this additional 5 million dollars was funded to the project, the property was sold to Osgoode Properties, Inc. of Ottawa, who also got into trouble and who recently paid out to the Alberta Treasury Branches approximately 60% of their original debt. All in all, the lost interest and the original loan amounts, cumulatively would total losses of approximately 20 million dollars. Consistent with the modus operandi, Whitehall Square got passed through various incarnations. With each incarnation, the losses became greater and greater as each new owner pillaged the project for personal gain. This prolonged the agony. (Where is Dr. Kevorkian when you really need him?) How many orders of bad fries can one eat?
Prudent folks like you and me would assume that after all this, the Alberta Treasury Branches would want to end their relationship with Mr. Comrie. Alas, our assumption would be
incorrect. The ATB was only too willing to continue doing business with Mr. Comrie; but now the story also includes the Bank of Nova Scotia as the victim and Mr. Comrie's enterprise, the Brick Warehouse, that I mentioned earlier.
Poor Bill got into trouble with the Brick Warehouse as well. At the time, he was approximately 115 million dollars in debt to the Alberta Treasury Branches. Mr. Comrie knew he had offended his friends at the Alberta Treasury Branches but not at the government. The ATB had come to an agreement that Mr. Comrie should move a portion of his Brick Warehouse debt from the Alberta Treasury Branches. To his credit, Mr. Comrie came up with a plan that ensured the viability of the Brick Warehouse as an ongoing entity for years to come. Many senior officials at the ATB have admitted that they doubted whether the Brick Warehouse had ever been profitable. Mr. Cornrie was successful, however. The Alberta Treasury Branches and Mr. Comrie unloaded nearly 60% of the substantial debt of the Brick Warehouse to the Bank of Nova Scotia for BNS shares. The ATB never actually got any money. The agreement between the two banks was such that neither lender could act on the loan without the other's approval. The Bank of Nova Scotia was duped by both Mr. Comrie and the Alberta Treasury Branches who knew that his operating accounts had been a mess for years. In fact, the ATB never actually knew what the Brick Warehouse had for inventory since Mr. Comrie would never allow them to do an inventory audit. However, they long suspected that Mr. Comrie was using old stock to shore up a shaky balance sheet.
Yet after all this, in 1994 when the Acting Superintendent, Elmer Leahy, took over the reins of the Alberta Treasury Branches, he saw fit to increase the loan exposure to the Brick
Warehouse. Mr. Leahy did this knowing very well that the ATB had loan loss provisions of 100% of the loans to the Brick Warehouse, because they knew there was nothing to be recovered in a receivership. Before Mr. Leahy was the Acting Superintendent, the Bank of Nova Scotia wanted to place the Brick Warehouse in receivership, but needed the approval of the ATB to do so, as I discussed earlier. Mr. Leahy went out of his way to protect his friend, Bill Comrie, by ensuring that the Bank of Nova Scotia did not acquire the approval of ATB to place the Brick Warehouse in receivership.


Mr. Comrie can never be considered an intellectual, but he fancied himself as a developer. The sad truth, however, is that everything Mr. Comrie attempted to do in real estate turned into a huge mess for others but never himself; usually with the Government of Alberta and, therefore, the taxpayers of Alberta taking the proverbial haircut. One of the Brick Warehouse advertising gimmicks that was blasted over the air waves, ad nauseam, was the no down payment, no interest, don't pay until next year type of sale. Now you know the secret behind his marketing genius. He banked at the Alberta Treasury Branches.
Consider the City Centre (now Commerce Place) deal in downtown Edmonton. Mr. Comrie and Edmonton real estate developer and long time Tory bagman, Les Mabbott, got Premier Don Getty to approve a lease in the project known as the City Centre building (built by the Reichmans) for office space for Government of Alberta, one of the main tenants--at inflated rates of course. To add insult to injury, both Mr. Comrie and Mr. Mabbott, after the City Centre lease was signed, did a land assembly with a few of the Tory faithful. They then flipped the completed land deal to the Reichman family, Canada's best bankrupts, for a profit. Mr. Comrie and Mr. Mabbott took a lease fee as well as a fee for arranging the land transaction.
In a depressed commercial rented market that was plagued by a glut of unleased office space, the Reichman's City Centre project should never have been built. Other landlords and developers were hurt in that City Centre was leasing AAA space at $5 per foot, a figure no one could compete with. Eventually, the Reichmans lost the project and the CIBC foreclosed on it. And you, long-suffering taxpayers, were paying for space that was never fully utilized by the government, and in some cases, the tenant improvements were never done.
There are those in the development community that believe the Premier benefited from his actions. There are many questions that are still swirling around a group of houses in San Diego, California, the site of Mr. Comrie's IHL hockey franchise. The relationship between Mr. Comrie and Mr. Getty was such that every time Mr. Comrie got into trouble, he would run to the Premier to help smooth things over. One former official at the Alberta Treasury Branches who declined to be named publicly thought that Bill Comrie was one of the worst individuals he ever dealt with. If Mr. Comrie couldn't get his way, he would enlist the aid of the Premier and the Provincial Treasurer.
Mr. Comrie is a 50% owner in the Edmonton residential development called Lewis Estates. The Churchill Group (more on them later) hold the other 50% (they also banked at the ATB and purchased Stuart Olson Construction with a huge loss to ATB). Mr. Getty has a lovely new home in this development, adjacent to the golf course where some people claim he did his best work as Premier. The choice of his residence was probably just a coincidence.
Mr. Comrie has a certain profile in the community for supporting various charities. I can’t help wondering if his enthusiastic support of theses fund drives (to which I understand he contributes very little monetarily himself) is a means to salve his conscience.