Quote:
Originally Posted by rage2
Ottawa went bankrupt. Vancouver and Montreal continued to lose money and was forced to sell at losses to stop the bleeding.
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The Canadian dollar is what caused the Habs fire sale, and their insane property taxes. The Molson’s were able to buy the team back for well more than double the price the brewery sold it for. Gillette took on the financing of the arena and made hundreds of millions, and since he sold it the Molson’s have made hundreds of millions as well.
Griffiths had other money problems that put the strain on his situation, but was bought out by another owner when the rest of his family members wanted to sell their stakes. But Orca Bay kept going with the arena financing successfully without him. It’d be like CSECs paying for an arena, and Edwards buys out the rest of the owners because they were struggling with the dollar and their other businesses suffering, and Edwards reaps the rewards later. The richer owner who’s primary income was in American dollars won out. The Aquilini’s buying in have made big gains as well.
Even Ottawa’s case has more to do with non-building stuff. Building in the suburbs was stupid, but they had the rug pulled out from under them when a bunch of land they had didn’t get rezoned as was the plan (effectively cutting the developable area in half which was a big part of the project. The death blow came when the facility management company went bankrupt because of the Enron scandal (seriously) and the team followed suit.