The Decibel - The multibillion-dollar fight over the McCain Foods fortune

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

The heirs to Canada’s multi-billion dollar frozen food empire are fighting. New Brunswick’s McCain Foods is the world’s largest French fry maker, and is privately owned by the McCain family. Recently, one of its heirs, Eleanor McCain, requested to be bought out of her stake in the company – but her relatives are refusing to.Globe business columnist, Andrew Willis, has been reporting on the showdown inside one of Canada’s wealthiest families. He’ll explain the fight over ownership, whether it could impact the world’s biggest French fry producer, and how these tensions trace back to the 1990s dispute over succession between McCain Foods co-founders.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You've probably heard the name McCain. And you've likely eaten their food, too. The Canadian company is the world's largest French fry maker. McCain Foods is one of the few global champions in this country. One in four French fries eaten each day comes from McCain Foods. They're earning $16 billion a year in sales. This is a company that has really conquered the world. Andrew Willis is a business colonist at the globe.

The McCain family would be one of the richest clan. in this country. They're worth billions and billions of dollars. This is probably a $20 billion plus fortune. The McCain Frozen Food Empire is still privately owned and is divided between dozens of family members. And over the years, things have gotten complicated. This family went to war in the 1990s over succession. And while they've been incredibly successful since then, the scars from that battle have never healed, not even close. And it's all coming up again now. One family member, now wants to cash out, which has kicked off the latest feud. Andy is on the show today to take us inside this battle over ownership

and explain what dissent within the family could mean for one of Canada's most successful brands. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Hi, Andy, thanks so much for being on the show. Cheryl, great to be here. So, Andy, this is not the first time that Bacains are fighting, And these types of stories are intriguing because they involve family dynamics and a lot of money. But aside from this, why is this important to pay attention to? So this is one of the few Canadian companies that's actually been successful on the global stage.

And I would argue, Cheryl, that we need a lot more McCain Foods. We need a lot more Canadian companies that have been able to do what they've done. And a fight over the ownership of the company could hold them back. But also, if you think about the Canadian economy as a whole, a lot of businesses are private businesses. And a lot of families have trouble handing that business from one generation to the next. So if the McCain's are screwing it up, if the McCain's can't get it right, what does that say about a whole lot of slightly smaller family company? So I'd like to see this story as an example of a family that manages to sort out its problems that stays successful and that continues a global platform. Because that's the kind of thing that a lot of Canadian companies can do.

Right across this country, we've got the Richardson family in Manitoba, massive private company that's been very successful. Jimmy Patterson out in Vancouver, incredibly successful entrepreneur, you want to see those businesses continue to prosper. And that's sort of the blueprint that McCain's have to build. Yeah. And also I feel like because this company is such a big juggernaut in Canada that, you know, whatever happens in this company must have an impact on the Canadian economy. Oh, absolutely.

I mean, in New Brunswick especially, this is a dominant employer. So, and these are good jobs, you know, high paying jobs, even working in the factories, chopping up French fries. Those are great jobs. So you want to see this company continue to prosper. And look, their exports are unbelievable. They're a dominant player in Australia. They're dominant in the United States.

McDonald's French fries all come from McCain's. I mean, it's a really successful company. And part of the reason they've done that, Cheryl, if we can digress for one second, they allow the local managers to create local food. So in India, you can get some special flavors of McCain's frozen potatoes that you would never see in any other market, catering to local tastes. Same in Australia. The Australians apparently, they like French fries that have been dipped in beer and batter.

and deep fried. I think that's a cholesterol killer, but the Aussies like it, and McCain sells a ton of them. So what they've done is give autonomy to the different field forces, autonomy to the regional leaders, and that's been incredibly successful. So let's kind of understand how this company from New Brunswick became this huge global empire. So where did things start? So you trace it back to 1957. Wallace and Harrison McCain are the sons of a potato farmer, third generation potato farmer. They have two slightly older brothers who are not really part of the story, but they had a little bit of money. So they loaned Wallace and Harrison a little money.

Wallace and Harrison put in everything they'd ever saved. They opened one frozen French fry plant in Florenceville, and everything went from there. And this co-CEO structure where Wallace and Harrison sort of split the company, they each took different regions. One of them took the United States. One of them took Europe. And they just sort of kept out of each other's way. And it was incredibly successful. They lived next door to each other.

They got along well, and they just kept rolling along. And they kept it private, too, Cheryl. And that's important for what's going on right now. They use the money they raised and a little bit of bank borrowing. And they just kept reinvesting in the company, building new factories. They built strong agricultural ties everywhere they went. They've got over 7,000 potato farmers that just supply them. And they built these strong ties to companies like Loblaws and Metro and Sobies.

And away they went. But I think the key to their success was this regional philosophy. If we can have products in one market, you know, in Australia that we don't have in other markets. And, you know, it sounds so simple, but to execute year after year in this highly competitive French fry business, it's admirable. The McCain's success is they produce different products, but are incredibly efficient on the actual operation side. Right. That's very interesting. And, yeah, like you said, different products, we're not just talking about French fries, although French fries is they're kind of their big thing.

There's also, like, the deep and delicious cake that I think many people will know about the pizza pockets. At one point, they had juice, but I think that's gone now. They have a lot of products here. Do we have a sense of how much McCain Foods is worth? We do. So McCain's, as I said, is private. But they do disclose their sales every year. So right now they're selling $16 billion a year, mostly in potatoes, but in those, you know, the cakes and the pizza pockets.

There's a lot of public companies, including a big U.S. potato company that are roughly the same size. So based on the sales of the U.S. potato company, you would calculate that McCain's is worth at least $20 billion. Could be worth up to $30 billion. If you were an investment banker, Cheryl, what you'd say is, McCain should trade at a multiple of its revenues. So if you're selling $16 billion in potatoes, your company's probably worth about $30 billion. Interesting. Okay.

And it is entirely owned by the family. And both Wallace and Harrison had a lot of kids. Harrison, he had five kids. And the key players in this drama are Wallace's kids. They include, he had four children, two daughters, two sons. He had a son, Michael, who went to work at the company, and then his daughter, Eleanor. So that's the second generation of ownership. they've all got significant stakes,

but we're now down to, you know, the children of the founders have kids and then they have kids. So we're into four generations now. Right. So there's a lot of shareholders. And again, that's not unusual. There's lots of multi-generational companies,

especially in Europe, that are private and have, you know, four or five hundred family shareholders. So you can do this. There are patterns to do it, but it gets a little tense, which it is right now. Yeah, and let's talk about this tension

because, like you said, we're into the fourth generation. There are a very successful multi-billion-dollar company here. And, of course, things can get complicated when you work with your family. And that's what ends up happening between the McCain brothers. So can you just tell us what happened?

Sure. In the early 1990s, Wallace McCain has a son named Michael McCain, a very, very powerful businessman, really, really driven individual. I met him a ton of times. Michael was running the U.S. Division of McCain Foods. He wanted to be the next CEO. His dad also wanted him to be the next CEO. Harrison wanted to go outside and find a outside manager.

And the two brothers who had got along so well for so long, they could not get agreement on succession. So they eventually went to arbitration. They went to court. They had a nasty court fight. Everybody said mean things about each other in terms of management skills and business skills. I think a lot of the things that they said they probably really wished to have back. But in 1994, court in New Brunswick said, no, we like Harrison's vision. Wallace and Michael, we don't like what you want to do.

And Wallace and Michael said, fine, we're going to leave. and Michael and his dad turned around, took some money out of the company successfully and bought Maple Leaf Foods, one of the largest protein producers, one of the largest chicken and pork producers in Canada. Yeah. Another big company in Canada.

Another big company. Michael's run that for a very long time. He's now executive chair. He's handed over the reins to a new CEO. But the legacy of that is ill will between a lot of the different siblings and a lot of the different cousins. I find it fascinating because,

like we talked about, this is a family-run business. And then one of the brothers does not want to have his nephew as CEO. So do we know why he wanted to go outside of the family? I think if you look at successful businesses, they typically, by the second or third generation, they typically bring in outside managers. It's just, you know, the genetics don't always create great leaders.

So if you look, especially in Europe, a lot of these companies that have been private, stayed private, they are no longer run by the founding family. And I think Harrison had the right vision, much as I like Michael McCain, I think he's a terrific operator. Harrison's success with his vision of how succession should work, that was the right vision. Yeah, but I mean, I mean, the argument against that would be that Michael went on to run a successful business outside of McCain's. So let's talk about what this feud meant for the business. How did it affect the business? Well, that's a really good question. So what Harrison did, once the family fight broke out and Harrison won the family fight, he decided to keep the business of the family

away from the business of the company. So you've got a two-tier structure running McCain Foods. There's an operating board of directors, mostly staffed by independent people, and that's the board that basically runs the company. They've got an outside chair. So that's a really good structure. And then above that, the company that actually owns all the shares, they call it the hold co or the baby board because most of the people on it are babies of Harrison and Wallace.

So that board is mostly made up of family members. It's effectively what we call a family office. That's where the payments to the family come. Like there'd probably be a monthly allowance for most of the heirs of Wallace and Harrison. And that's actually, again, that's really common in private companies. It just insulates the operating units from anything that's going on in the family.

Yeah. Like what's going on now? Can you explain that a little bit more? Like, why do this? Like, what's the value in separating these two things? You're always making decisions at the company in the best interest of the company, not the best interest of the family.

So this two-tier structure breaks apart decisions. The family deals with their issues at the hold company, at the baby board, but the operational unit that that baby board controls, they're only making decisions for the good of the company. Okay. So the family still got to keep their holdings in the company. They did. Everybody kept their ownership, except Michael, who had other interests and was allowed to sell some of his stick. All right. So he sold some mistake and you just didn't get to run the company.

Exactly. All right. So this fight settled in the 90s. But what happens between then and the current rift happening today? Like, is the business running and the family is why? Are they kind of like simmering? Are they mad? Like, what's happening? Our understanding is that the family members have never really gotten over. Some of them have reconciled, but most of them have never got over the split between Harrison or Wallace.

It was seismic. It was very personal. And so some of the family members just don't get along with one another. Okay. So let's bring it to today. Yes. Why is the family fighting now? Sure. So Eleanor McCain is a 56-year-old. She's a musician. She hasn't worked at the family company. She's been touring this country for years in the recent past, in the last couple of months, Eleanor decided that for estate planning reasons, for philanthropic reasons, and we'll go into that in a sec, she wanted to take her money out of McCain and have it separately run on her behalf by her own people.

There is a structure that allows McCain to do that, but to date, Eleanor has been unsuccessful in getting her money out. There's a couple of issues, including how. much is Eleanor's stake worth? Because this company is just so darn big. And that's getting a little ugly. So lots of lawyers have been hired. There's a lot of dispute and all the old feud feelings are being revisited as Eleanor attempts to withdraw her fortune from the family company. Why won't her relatives cash her out? Because this is what's happening, right? They don't want to cash her out. Yeah. So the family company talked to us, us being the global male, and they

said basically there is a mechanism for Eleanor to withdraw her money. We respect the fact that she wants to do this. Having said that, we must balance Eleanor's interests against the interest of the company and the interests of all the other family members. And I think what's going on here is two things, Cheryl. First of all, there's questions about what's the value of the company. There are lots of formulas. And if you hire accountants and investment bankers, they'll give you a broad range of valuations for any family company. And we're talking about something in the billion dollar range. So the numbers are huge. And then secondly, there's the issue for the family members who remain behind, the only way really to pay her out is to go borrow money, is to take the

Family Holdco, go in debt up to, let's pick a number of billion bucks, to pay out Eleanor. Can you explain that bit? Because, of course, we're talking about how this is a very, very wealthy company. So why would they have to go into debt? The way that they fund these companies is they take the cash that they earn from selling French fries every year, and they plow it back into the company. Like, there'd be dividends and there'd be some money that goes up to the family members, but there's not a billion bucks sitting around on the balance sheet at the holding

company or the operating company, it's just companies just don't work that way. When they have a demand for a big liquidity event like this, it takes a lot of work. And what McCain Foods is saying to us is we got to balance everybody's interests here and we'll get to it. So obviously the fact that it's in the globe tells you that they're having trouble balancing everybody's interests and some people are getting pretty angry. But that's the fundamental issue, is how do you buy out Eleanor without disrupting the rest of the family? We'll be right back. So could this fight have any impact on the business?

Well, I wrote a column saying one solution here could be what a lot of other successful family companies have done, which is take the company public. McCain Foods, if it went public at $20 billion, then if Eleanor wants to sell some shares and all she does is calls her broker and, you know, big block of shares trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange, boom, Eleanor's got her legacy. public is one potential answer, I don't think the family wants to do that. I mean, that opens up a whole other can of worms, right? A huge can of worms. Suddenly you go from generational family control where you're thinking five and ten years to your quarter to quarter, you've got all this reporting. There's public information on how much you own. People living in small town, New Brunswick, don't really want their neighbors to know that they're multi-billionaires. Everybody kind and knows it, but it's easier to just pretend it doesn't exist. And as long as you're private,

there's just a degree of security and a degree of privacy that I think this family really welcomes. Yeah, can you kind of lay out just like, you know, let's get down to like the bare bones here of like the difference between private and public, publicly owned companies? Like what would change if they went public? Sure. So if they went public, all the salaries for all the employees be disclosed, the personal holdings of each of the McCain family members would be in the stock listings and they'd be chasing

quarterly earnings. This is unfortunate dynamic of public markets is you're up and down every quarter. And some people in family businesses would argue that that distracts from creating long-term value. Now, having said that, there are lots of companies that are controlled by families, but are publicly traded, thinking of Thompson Reuters, which is run by the Thompson family, who also owned the Globe Mail, Power Corp of Canada. And those companies have done very well. They needed public markets because they needed capital to build their businesses. And the families have got used to the exposure that comes with being public. an IPO for McCain Food would be a great event for Canadian capital markets.

I don't think they're thinking of it right now, but it would be an attractive option. And it's not completely unprecedented. We kind of laid out how there is this two-tiered system happening right now, right? So would this fight have any impact on the operational side? To date, it hasn't had any impact on the operational side. The company has basically said, you know, we're doing really well. And part of, I think, Cheryl, honestly, part of the reason that Eleanor is exiting is because they've been so successful. Like she has ambitions on her own, and she knows that this company has just done fabulously well.

But operationally, they're in great shape. What happens at the family whole cold because of the good design of this, it's not really going to affect McCain Foods. They're not going to have to sell a French fried division or get rid of deep and delicious cakes. They can just continue on their own way. There is going to be some stress and strain at the holding company, but that's going to be largely invisible to the public. That's just a company owned by the family. So the family office, squabbles and family offices are actually far more common than you would think. You know, nothing like a lot of money to create tensions in families.

Yep. Yep. We all know family drama and I'm sure adding billions of dollars into that makes it way more complicated. Exactly right. So of course, McCain Foods is not the only big family-owned business in Canada. Do we know what makes succession work in some family-owned businesses but not in others? Sure. There's been a ton of work done on this, a TMU and the Telfare School up at the University of Ottawa.

They've all got professors who just focus on family businesses. So the key thing, there's two key things here. First of all, you've got to have clear rules and like a shareholder agreement around ownership. So you have the situation where Eleanor wants out, there's clear rules. And that's the first thing. The second element is around leadership. Who's going to be the CEO of the company? And that's really critical because that's where the fight was at McCain's.

And if you have clear rules saying it's not going to be a family member, in fact, at McCain, There are some family members working there, but it's discouraged. You're not, as a McCain third and fourth generation McCain family member, you're not encouraged to join the family company. The Richardson family out in Manitoba, I mentioned them earlier, they ask that any heir to the James Richardson Foundation, and they're in six generations, they have to go work somewhere else for six years. And then if they want to come back to the family company, they're allowed to do so. So there's structures to keep leadership professional and leadership, you know, in the hands of CEOs who are really competent. As opposed to someone who has the same last name as the founder. Yes.

You want to have a CEO that actually has the business behind them to be able to come in and run a company successfully. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So despite the current few, did the McCain get succession right? I think they did. I mean, the success of the food company speaks for itself. They've had a series of excellent CEOs.

They've kept it private. But because we can see the sales, we can see that they've grown the business everywhere. On a strictly Canadian story, one of the reasons I know the McCain's is I cover. the fact that they made a massive investment in Alberta. They're one of the largest potato producers in Alberta. They've put huge amounts of money into New Brunswick. They're good corporate citizens, I think is a point I want to make in this emphasis on sustainable agriculture. I think they've been leaders on that. So, yeah, no, they did get succession right. What they're arguing about with, with Eleanor McCain is just some old issues. You know, you've got scar tissue from a brutal

family feud a generation back. And then you've got the massive wealth that has accumulated to this family because they've been so very successful. So how could this play out for Eleanor? Like, what's happened since her request to be cashed out? So one of the problems in reporting this is everybody has now signed non-disclosure agreements. Okay. So when you sign NDAs, talking to newspaper reporters is sort of frowned on. So everybody's now kind of huddled the boardroom, you know, Eleanor's lawyers would pass

her suggestions over to lawyers for the rest of the family. They're trying to negotiate this quietly and keep it out of the headlines. And I think at some stage, they'll come up with a structure that works for everybody. We do know something about what's going on through lawyers, I think, and I think the holding company has a spokesperson. Can you tell me what you learned through that? Well, yeah, so everybody's trying to spin the global mail here. Okay. That's just normal.

So to the extent that we're going to report on this, each side wants to make sure that wants to make their points, wants to help us understand that, you know, it's not just about Eleanor. There's a company here. There's the rest of the family to consider. So those things are important. But the other thing that crops up, and again, I don't know Eleanor McCain well. But I can see what she's up to in her life. I'm sorry, I said I don't know Eleanor McCain. Well, I have never met.

Okay. So let's be clear on that. She has bought some properties in Peggy's Cove. She's in the process of rezoning some of those properties. She wants to build a big art gallery and a museum in Peggy's Cove. Like when she talks about philanthropy, she's sincere. She wants to do neat things in Maritime Canada where her roots are. So that's admirable.

And look, in her music, she goes in tapes with symphony orchestra. across this country and then produces albums. Like she's supporting music across Canada through the obvious advantage she has from her family wealth. Again, I think that's admirable. So that's the sort of stuff that she's up to. And that's her motivation for exiting the family company. So will they eventually have to cash her out? They will.

They will because there is, there is a structure that Harrison became put in place a generation back that allows Eleanor and the other heirs to exit. And what I'm interested in and I hope I get to report on is if others exit behind Ellen Interesting. Okay. Is that possible? It is. I mean, the structure is there for a reason, and I don't know if she will trigger something with oppressive relatives. Based on what I know, other members of the family are pretty happy with the status quo. They get dividends from the company. Their company is continuing to do extremely well. I don't get a sense that there's unrest, but Eleanor will certainly set a precedent here. Yeah, because that would probably trigger. I mean, if they're going to cash out Eleanor, then there'd be more billions of dollars, perhaps, in the future.

And that could be an issue. And remember what I said. She is one of nine offspring of Harrison and Wallace. So there's a lot of kids. The kids, there are a lot of people in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Yeah, that's the second generation. And then when we get to the third and fourth generation, who knows what their priors are going to be. What will you be watching next in this McCain family feud?

I'm expecting this to go very quiet. And then there's going to, someone's going to call me and say, we settled and we will not tell you how much. And that's going to my job here at the Globe Mail, will be to find out all the details. I look forward to seeing that story when it comes out. That'll be a fun one. Andy, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. That was Andrew Willis, a business colonist for the globe.

That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Alyssa Wheeler joins us as our Brooke Forbes fellow and is our associate producer. Our producers are Madeline White, Mikhail Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer,

and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.