Our poll finds a scandalous issue, a golden-child company, some favourite toys, but no one big hero to worship in the most mythical of places in Canadian business.

By Andre Mayer

What's Bay Street thinking? It's a question that occupies investors and observers, but in a survey conducted exclusively for The Bull, the street has spoken to us directly. National polling agency COMPAS Inc. asked 571 chief executive officers and business leaders from across Canada to answer a host of questions about "Bay Street." The results* provide an intriguing snapshot of what "making it" in Canadian business looks like in 2004, as well as of what those who have made it have on their minds.

THE PLACE: Literally speaking, Bay Street is a north-south-running street that cuts a swath through downtown Toronto's most imposing office towers. According to our survey, however, what pops into the minds of Canadian business leaders when they hear "Bay Street" is a place of metaphorical or perhaps even mythical proportions called success.

In fact, few business leaders give much consideration to Bay Street's geographic co-ordinates. When asked what it meant to be a "Bay Street Company," only nine percent of respondents said a firm actually "located on Bay Street." Nineteen percent said that a "Bay Street company" was any "major corporation located in Canada." Another 14 percent averred that it was a "major financial services company in Canada."

So what's the makeup of Bay Street proper? Well, take a walk down Bay, past the Canada Trust Tower, the Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower and the Royal Bank Plaza, and draw your own conclusions. It's banking heaven. When asked to name the type of business most readily associated with Bay Street, 29 percent of our respondents chose the banks. Another 20 percent proffered the stock exchange and another 10 percent said brokerage firms.

THE PLAYERS: The most obvious finding of our poll was this: Bay Street has no heroes. Sure, there are people who embody business success, but for the most part, there's no cult of personality. When Canada's leading executives were asked by COMPAS to name the person who most personifies Bay Street success, takeover king Gerry Schwartz, a.k.a. Mr. Heather Reisman, finished first, with a mere 12 percent. The president of Onex Corp. has orchestrated some pretty stunning deals, but these numbers don't suggest a landslide of popularity. Chalk it up to Canadian reserve, but corporate Canada doesn't seem to lionize its business leaders the way Americans do. We would never think of giving Schwartz his own reality-TV show.


After Schwartz, respondents picked a bevy of bankers: CIBC's John Hunkin, TD's W. Edmund Clark (four percent each), RBC's Gordon Nixon and Scotiabank's Richard Waugh (three percent each), followed by Manulife Financial Corp.'s Dominic D'Alessandro (three percent). Why did they rate so high? Sure, they're well-paid presidents and chief executives of widely held companies, but they're not worth a fraction of some of the people lower down the list (like Belinda Stronach, Paul Desmarais and Canada's wealthiest man, Ken Thomson). A survey of Wall Street would probably turn up very few bankers, but their inclusion here seems to say something very revealing about success in Canadian business. If you head a bank, you're a player. Average Canadians might not recognize your name, but Bay Street sure does. The explanation is simple: banks hold our money, and the number of major Canadian banks is few (getting fewer all the time). Bank presidents wield enormous power, not only over average citizens but the corporate elite as well.

Scroll down the list and you come across names like disgraced press baron Conrad Black and Prime Minister Paul Martin (two percent each). Martin made a very public show of breaking from his business when he put control of Canada Steamship Lines in the hands of his sons, but he still appears to be recognized by corporate Canada as one of its own. For a politician, he commands a substantial amount of sway. A couple of wealthy American interlopers (Bill Gates and Donald Trump) also charted on our poll. With Trump International Hotel & Tower — a 68-storey edifice at 325 Bay St. that might just be big enough to house The Donald's ego — slated for completion in 2008, the real-estate mogul with the billowy coif appears to have established a beachhead in Canadian business. While some wonder if he can pull it off, Trump has told The Bull he likes his odds in the Toronto market.

THE LIFESTYLE: So you've made it on Bay Street. You've got your TSX listing, you've got your swishy office in First Canadian Place. Bravo. Now that you've reached this new profit plateau, you need to let everybody know. So how do you go about flaunting your success? With luxury items, bien sur, like a brazenly lustrous timepiece or a slick, overpriced automobile to inspire awe and resentment on city streets. Hey, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that bling. Rolex is Bay Street's most coveted watch (53 percent of respondents), with the next well-known Cartier garnering eight percent. When choosing its favourite ride, the Street has a soft spot German engineering, with BMW placing first (with 27 percent), followed by Mercedes (22 percent). As for the Mazda3, Canada's best-selling passenger vehicle, zero percent named it as their dream car.

THE TRIUMPHS AND
EMBARRASSMENTS: Like any business hub, Bay Street is prone to the peaks and valleys of the market. According to 36 percent of business leaders polled, the sector that best represents a bullish market is the banking industry. (Do you see a trend here?) The biotech/pharmaceutical industry placed a remote second (with nine percent), while a couple of individual companies — golden-child Westjet and beleaguered Nortel — each got seven percent.

Business scandals have occupied newspaper headlines for the past few years. When asked to name the greatest-hits list of Canadian corporate malfeasance, 35 percent of respondents pointed to the Enron accounting fiasco and its ties to CIBC. Bre-X, that once-sparkling mineral play, also looms large in Bay Street's psyche (25 percent). The revelations at Hollinger and the dramatic fall of Lord Black of Crossbarbour — a drama that continues to play out like a Greek tragedy, or an Ealing comedy — garnered only a few votes.

*Note: this sample is deemed accurate to within 4.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.