influential personalities. Dubbed by critics as the ‘Burnt-Outs club’, the conference was created in the mid-1950s by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands to improve relations among members of NATO. As a representative of Canada, Black flew to Holland, where he began a series of special intellectual and personal relationships. Among those with whom he eventually bonded were Gianni Agnelli of Fiat, the newly appointed US Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle, the conservative American columnist George Will and Andrew Knight, the British editor of the Economist. He also renewed his acquaintance with Henry Kissinger. The participants at the conference were impressed by the studiously casual Canadian businessman, sauntering into meetings to regale his audience with his remarkable memory. ‘I’m a fatalist,’ he explained in one conversation. ‘I believe that people’s destinies are always more fascinating than their day-to-day reactions.’ His heroes, he continued, were common men whose dreams of greatness materialised after they had overcome huge adversity – Napoleon, de Gaulle, Abraham Lincoln, Marshal Foch, Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Whatever their personal faults, they were vindicated by their success. Historic acclaim, he argued, excused treachery. Eventual vindication after widespread hatred was the qualification for his worship. He preferred to forget that the rest of mankind lived by other rules – namely contemporaneous judgement.
Mixing with multi-millionaires and power-brokers fed Black’s fantasies. Bilderberg was a magnet for romantics, social climbers and conservatives, and like his new associates Black was aghast that America had surrendered in Vietnam rather than staying on to secure total victory. Their common Saviour was Ronald Reagan, the restorer of conviction to political life. As Black spoke, endlessly reciting juicy historic details, he visualised the prospect of becoming celebrated himself, providing quotations for later generations to savour. That surely was his destiny.
The following year Black invited Kissinger to address a group of Canada’s elite in Toronto. The former US Secretary of State, attracted to expensive meal tickets, was easily flattered by Black’s material generosity and scholarly praise. That Christmas Fred Eaton would give a copy of Kissinger’s memoirs to Black, and thereafter he would often hear from his friend, ‘I’ve just had lunch/dinner with Henry, and he says …’ Having gained an entrée to both the Bilderberg cast and Palm Beach’s aristocrats, Black sensed his opportunity to join the American establishment. Stepping up would require his own fortune.
Expanding into American mining seemed the perfect way to realise his financial and social ambitions. In January 1979 he had identified Hanna Mining, the world’s second-largest iron-ore producer, based in Cleveland, Ohio, as an ideal target. After secret discussions with Fred Eaton and Edward Battle, another director of Norcen, they agreed to accumulate enough shares covertly to buy Hanna at a bargain price.
Hanna was owned and managed by the Humphreys, a long-established family which was embroiled in numerous feuds. Argus and Hanna both owned an interest in the Iron Ore Company of Canada, which was run by Hanna with a 26.5 per cent stake, compared to Argus’s 10.5 per cent. That connection provided Black with the opportunity in June 1980 to initiate a conversation with George Humphrey, Hanna’s vice president. Humphrey, Black knew, was disgruntled by the Hanna board’s refusal to appoint him as chief executive. Instead, the family had selected Bob Anderson, a professional mining expert. Humphrey’s mother, a widow, shared her son’s anger. As a master of exploiting dissatisfaction, Black called on George Humphrey, offering his condolences and help. Seducing dissatisfied shareholders, Black knew from the capture of Argus, was an ideal tactic in take-over battles. With that chore completed, Black made use of repeated opportunities to meet other vulnerable members of the Humphrey family across America – in country clubs, boardrooms, restaurants and at a society ball. In August 1981, believing that his credentials were established, he sought the family’s approval to buy shares in Hanna. He would claim that both George Humphrey and Bob Anderson had offered no objections to his purchase of ‘some shares’,20 but the family and the company’s directors would insist that his proposal was firmly rejected.21 Events would bear out the family’s version.
During August 1981 Black’s company Norcen secretly bought 4.9 per cent of Hanna’s shares. The purchase was entirely financed by a C$20 million loan from CIBC. In securing that loan, Black, a director of the bank, demanded special treatment, stipulating that ‘secrecy was paramount’. No statements regarding the loan and the purchase were to be delivered by the bank to Norcen’s office; and Hanna’s shares were to be bought by the bank, using an undisclosed numbered account. On 9 September, after the shares had been bought, Black summoned a board meeting of Norcen directors in Toronto. Fred Eaton, Edward Battle and others were in no doubt about his intention. ‘We want a friendly take-over,’ Black agreed with his directors. Bill Kilbourne, the company’s secretary, accurately recorded in the minutes of the meeting that the purchase of shares in ‘the target company’ was completed, ‘with the ultimate purpose of acquiring a 51 per cent interest at a later date’.22 Black signed those minutes.
Having secretly agreed his company’s objective, Black took a decision which could have increased his personal wealth. If the take-over of Hanna was successful, the value of Norcen’s shares would rise. To benefit personally from that increase, Black offered to buy back Norcen shares from his own shareholders. By law, he and his directors were required to tell their shareholders the full truth about their intentions regarding Hanna. Yet their letter, sent on 16 October 1981, did not reveal their secret purchase of Hanna’s shares or their resolution on 9 September to mount a take-over bid.
During October, again in secrecy, Black increased his stake in Hanna to 8.8 per cent. As soon as the second purchase was detected, Bob Anderson telephoned Black and accused him of breaking the rules. Black was prepared for the onslaught. Conjuring a performance as a helpful, innocent and sincere intellectual, he sought to smooth-talk the American into believing that his intention was simply cooperation. Only Black could have feigned surprise that Anderson’s response was, in Black’s own description, ‘an antagonistic, hostile and even frenetic reaction’.23 A meeting was summoned in Cleveland. Black flew south, to be told by Anderson to retreat and to sell off his shares. He ignored the warning. To enhance the impression of his virtue, he expressed his ‘hurt’ and ‘outrage’ that Anderson, a ‘rather underwhelming’ person, treated him with disdain and condescension.24 Undeterred and eager to raise his interest to 20 per cent, Black approached other Hanna shareholders, including old female members of the Humphrey family. He offered them all ‘an alliance’ against Hanna’s directors. War had been declared.
In Black’s opinion, his secrecy was consistent with normal trading in Toronto. Bud McDougald and the other Bay Street players had never considered behaving in any other fashion. In the heat of battle, he said, companies often misrepresented their intentions. Such tactics were aided by Canada’s weak regulators. Toronto’s stock market was supervised by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), which had never, in Black’s experience, so much as slapped a reprobate’s wrist in punishment for a crime. Reared in that wild-west monoculture, the aspiring tycoon did not understand that the stakes and rules for playing in the United States were different from those in his own crude backwater.
The investment by Norcen required Black to disclose his intentions to America’s all-powerful Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC. In his submission, he described the purchase of nearly 13 per cent of Hanna’s shares as ‘an investment position’, concealing his intention to mount a take-over bid. Convinced that his cultivated performance, combining his eloquent vocabulary, benign demeanour and forceful personality, would steamroll the opposition, he flew on 2 April 1982 to Palm Beach with Rupert Hambro on Black’s Challenger, the private plane he had inherited after the Argus coup. At the same time, Monte Black was dispatched to Cleveland to deliver a threat. Unless, said Monte, Bob Anderson and the Humphreys agreed to Norcen owning 30 per cent of the company and
