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Aquilini’s empire He’s best known as the owner of the Vancouver Canucks, but Francesco Aquilini and his family have built a wide-ranging business that includes everything from blueberry farms to hotels
Mission: To expand a diverse family business empire Assets: Family business assets estimated in the billions Yield: An unavoidable public persona related to owning the Vancouver Canucks
 By Glen Korstrom Most people know him as the owner of the Vancouver Canucks and GM Place. But the team and stadium are a small part of the diverse business empire estimated to be worth billions of dollars that’s owned by Francesco Aquilini and his family. Aquilini, his younger brothers Roberto and Paolo and his father Luigi own equal stakes in Aquilini Investment Group, but Francesco, as managing director, is the company’s public face. The family’s holding company also owns: •about 5,700 acres of farmland, including 1,200 acres of blueberries and 1,500 acres of cranberries; •the Bordertown movie set, which is the size of a small town; •the 36-hole Golden Eagle Golf Club; •a sustainable energy company that aims to produce energy out of Lower Mainland garbage; •seven hotels; •four office towers; and •45 Pizza Hut franchises. Aquilini used the economic downturn to forge ahead with plans to develop nearly $1 billion worth of real estate. “Everything is going ahead as planned,” Aquilini told Business in Vancouver January 13. “What we saw in the real estate market in Vancouver was a big V, a big drop and then it came back up again.” His planned projects include: •the Richards condominium development on the former Richards on Richards nightclub site; •the Maynards Block condominium development at 415 West 2nd Avenue, long known as the site for the auctioneer Maynards; and •four office towers surrounding GM Place. Pizza Hut expansion has also continued apace. Aquilini Investment Group has owned the B.C. rights to develop that Yum! Brands Inc. (NYSE:YUM) pizza chain for about five years, and Aquilini expects to add about three new Pizza Hut restaurants per year for the foreseeable future. The Aquilinis hire presidents to head corporate divisions. They report to Aquilini, his brothers and his father. Halifax-based Glenn Squires, for example, is CEO of the Aquilini Investment Group-owned Pacrim Hospitality, which manages about 60 hotels across Canada operating under brands such as Super 8, Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza. The Aquilini family owns seven of these hotel properties outright. All that wealth has prompted one of Aquilini’s billionaire friends to say that Aquilini could do more to make a better world. “I keep bugging him about this. I think he’s a great philanthropist in waiting,” said Fiore Financial CEO Frank Giustra, who is known for donating US$100 million plus half of what he earns for the rest of his life in the resource industry to the Clinton-Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative. “He’s got a good heart. ‘In waiting’ means that he’s got to cultivate that side of himself. I’m taking a shot at him here. I hope you print it.” Giustra spoke to BIV on January 18 while he was “working on an approach” to help people devastated by the Haitian earthquake. The Aquilinis have donated 200 acres of land for fish and wildlife preservation called the Aquilini Land Conservancy in Maple Ridge and another 180 acres of land in Pitt Meadows called Aquilini Codd Island Wetland Reserve. Francesco Aquilini has also chaired fundraising for an Italian garden at the Pacific National Exhibition. Other Aquilini good deeds have required influence, not money. Friend Peter Dhillon, who owns Richberry Farms and is Canada’s largest cranberry grower recalls trying to fulfil the wish of a friend’s dying teenaged son: to meet a Vancouver Canuck player. Dhillon ran into roadblocks when he phoned the team’s staff. Days after Dhillon phoned Aquilini, however, two Canucks visited the teen in the nick of time. Dhillon said the teen died the next day. Aquilini’s desire to know as many details as possible about all his family’s business dealings comes from his father, who immigrated to Canada in 1953 with little more than the shirt on his back. With no formal business education, Luigi instead tapped innate business instincts and progressed from being a landscaper to developing real estate. His eldest son completed a bachelor of business administration at Simon Fraser University and followed it up with an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles campus. “You can never know enough about a subject,” Aquilini said. “The more information you have about a subject, the more personal power you have.” Still, he believes about 80% of his business knowledge has been gleaned from experience and working with his father rather than from books or classroom learning. “[University] education opens doors, but it doesn’t keep you in the room,” he said. One lesson experience has taught Aquilini is that high-stakes business dealings are often bare-knuckled affairs that can be costly on a number of fronts. His acquisition of the Vancouver Canucks is a prime example. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Wedge vindicated Aquilini when two acquaintances – Beedie Group president Ryan Beedie and Northland Properties president Tom Gaglardi – launched a lawsuit alleging that Aquilini double-crossed them in their bid to buy the Canucks from Seattle billionaire John McCaw. Beedie and Gaglardi appealed the case all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada, which affirmed in July 2009 that Aquilini’s family alone owns the Canucks. The lawsuit severed friendships forged through family connections and the Young Presidents Organization. It also absorbed countless hours that Aquilini would otherwise have invested in evaluating business opportunities. “We’re going to start making a blueberry wine. We’re looking at making a blueberry balsamic vinegar and a blueberry energy drink,” he said. “We’re going to launch those products in the summer [under the Canadian Blueberries brand].” Pricy B.C. farmland led Aquilini to buy 600 acres of farmland in Washington state’s Sedro Wooly Valley last year. Meanwhile, Aquilini Renewable Energy is focused on generating power from Metro Vancouver garbage in a project that involves the Tsawwassen First Nation. On January 6, the B.C. government granted a long-awaited environmental certificate to the Village of Cache Creek and Bellkorp Environmental Services to add 42 hectares to the Cache Creek dump, thereby extending its life by 17 to 25 years. But Aquilini believes that his waste-to-energy project could still get off the ground. “The amount of garbage that Metro Vancouver is proposing to dispose of is about 500,000 tonnes. With that you can provide electricity to about 85,000 homes,” he said. “There’s no actual project. It’s something that we’re pursuing and proposing.” •
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This article from Business in Vancouver January 26-February 1, 2010; issue 1057 |
