Murray Pezim

Pezim was born in Toronto, the son of Romanian Jewish immigrants. His father worked as a butcher. He was known as a hustler from his early age as he constantly sought to find ways to make more money. == Mining promotion ==

In 1965, the Vancouver Stock Exchange (VSE) attracted much attention when Pyramid Mines, which was listed on the VSE, discovered a zinc deposit in the Northwest Territories, and which led to the stock of Pyramid Mines rising almost overnight from 0.25 cents per share to $22 per share. The success of Pyramid Mines made the VSE the premier stock exchange for listing mining companies in Canada, and led Pezim to move west to Vancouver. The journalist Geoff Castle described Pezim as "Howe Street’s promoter in chief" from 1965 onward. In the 1960s and 1970s, Pezim was active in promoting boxing fights in Vancouver. In 1970, he booked the boxer/gangster Marvin Elkind to fight against a much younger man with the expectation that Elkind would lose. Elkind described Pezim as a very flamboyant man whose outward bonhomie and good humor masked a cynical, manipulative and utterly selfish personality. Elkind confounded Pezim by winning the fight via knockout, which costed him a great deal of money as Pezim had bet against him. In 1972 Pezim promoted a boxing match in Vancouver between George Chuvalo and Muhammad Ali, renewing the famous rivalry between Chuvalo and Ali who fought each other in two matches in 1965 and 1966. Ali had not unable to knock out Chuvalo in their two matches in the 1960s and won both matches by decision of the judges, which given Chuvalo the image of a boxer with a nearly superhuman ability to absorb the powerful blows inflicted by Ali's fists and still keep fighting. Ali made a great point of insisting that this time he would finally knock out Chuvalo and told the media in his usual colorful way that he would regard any victory less than a knockout as a defeat. To attract media attention and build hype around the match, Pezim arranged for a series of public relations stunts where Ali and Chuvalo would make a great show of insulting each other. Ali carried an ax with him at the events to symbolize his intention to finally take down the "Canadian Oak" as Chuvalo had been nicknamed. The Ali-Chuvalo fight which occurred on 1 May 1972 turned out to be anticlimactic as Ali dominated the match for all of 12 rounds and won by decision, disappointing fans who expected the Chuvalo-Ali fight to be like their matches in the 1960s. The 1972 Ali-Chuvalo fight lacked the ferocity and explosive energy of their 1965 and 1966 fights as Chuvalo was in decline as a boxer by the early 1970s while Ali was not. The Ali-Chuvalo fight was a disaster for Pezim as he sold only half of the 17, 465 seats at the Pacific Coliseum, which ended up costing him $100, 000. Pezim charged too much for the tickets to the Ali-Chuvalo fight, leading him to him selling only half the seats. Many boxing fans had anticipated Ali's victory as Chuvalo who had been Canada's top boxer in the 1950s-1960s had seen a marked decline in his fighting ability while Ali had not, which also contributed to the underwhelming public response. In January 1977, Pezim was charged with fraud for his stock market dealings, but was acquitted in 1979. The Canadian journalists David Cruise and Alison Griffiths in their 1991 book Fleecing the Lamb : the Inside Story of the Vancouver Stock Exchange described Pezim as an unscrupulous mining promoter who went about maniacally promoting penny stocks of questionable value and strongly implied that he routinely broke the law in his business deals on Howe Street. Pezim frequently visited Las Vegas casinos, and the comedian Joey Bishop gave him the nickname of "the Jewish Howard Hughes". Three geologists Don McKinnon, John Larche and David Bell contracted Pezim to provide the capital for a gold mine. In 1980, Pezim allied himself with another VSE stockbroker Nell Dragovan, to create a company, Corona Resources, to develop a potential gold mine in northern Ontario at Hemlo Valley, committing $1.2 million in exchange for a 3% smelter royalty fee. Dragovan was a former secretary to Pezim whom Pezim lent $750, 000 while she herself invested $45, 000 of her own money. With the capital provided by Pezim and Dragovan, Bell began prospecting for gold in Hemlo Valley in November 1980. After encouraging drill results, Bell recommended that Corona buy two slots of land adjacent to the land it already owned.. On 6 May 1981, LAC Minerals approached Corona with an offer to buy a share of the Hemlo Valley, which led to some sort of understanding being reached, though the precise arrangement was the subject of much ligationý. On 29 May 1981, a drilling result from hole 76 discovered a rich vein of gold.. On 8 June 1981, Pezim became a director on the board of Corona and a vice president in August 1981. Before the drilling results from hole 76, the shares of Corona traded for about $1. 50 per share on the VSE, but as a result of Pezim's relentless efforts to promote the company, the price of Corona shares traded for $32 per share. Pezim founded at least 30 companies to speculate in Hemlo Valley while owning shares in another 30. Lola Williams, an American woman who owned a slot of land in Hemlo Valley was first approached by Corona to sell her land, and then by LAC Minerals. The Hemlo Valley gold mine turned out to be one of the richest gold mines in Canada, which by itself increased Canada's gold production by 23%. Patrick Mars, a mining expert stated that Hemlo Valley was the world's biggest gold mine outside of the gold mines of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. The ownership of the Hemlo Valley mine became mired in lawsuits as Pezim in 1984 sued the LAC Minerals for breach of trust. Pezim argued that the way that LAC Minerals had outbid him for the land owned by Williams was a breach of trust in the agreement that LAC and Corona were not to compete.. Pezim was deposed from the board of directors of Corona Resources, but in 1986 won a lawsuit against LAC Minerals for breach of trust and was awarded shares worth $154 million. In the summer of 1989, geologists working for Pezim discovered a gold deposit at Eskay Creek in northern British Columbia that proved to be worth billions once a mine was opened. Pezim's announcement about Eskay Creek led to a feverish gold rush atmosphere on the VSE as millions poured into the exchange and TV crews were present everyday to record the rampant speculation. Pezim was one of the most colorful and flamboyant "characters" selling shares in his companies on the Vancouver Stock Exchange. In 1990, the American journalist Greg Heberlein wrote: "Pezim's ego may be bigger than British Columbia, but he is a legend in more than just his own mind. His 1981 discovery of gold in Hemlo Valley, Ontario - the largest gold find ever in North America - is credited with saving the Vancouver Stock Exchange. He made a similarly huge discovery in British Columbia last year." Pezim defended the penny stocks in mining companies that he promoted and sold on the VSE, saying: "Take 500 shares at 40 cents. That's $2,000. The woman who bought those shares starts dreaming, `Maybe this is the one.' Those dreams are worth so much. What do you think lottery tickets do for people? You spend a couple bucks on the lottery, you get five nights of good dreams. These people can't afford IBM or General Motors." The average price of a stock on the VSE was 45 cents per share, which gave the VSE the image of a stock market accessible to ordinary people." As the VSE had the dubious reputation as "the scam capital of the world" as there was more fraud on the VSE than any other stock exchange in the world, the VSE was generally shunned by major investors and the majority who of those brought stocks on the VSE were ordinary people, who were more often than not swindled out of their money. About the frequent occurrence of fraud on the VSE, Pezim said all stock exchanges have "bad apples" and it was the responsibility of investors to exercise due diligence before buying shares on the VSE. The chairman of the VSE in 1990, Marty Reynolds stated that Pezim was a relentless promoter of his stocks, but added he was a "promoter, in the good sense of the word". In 1990, Pezim had at least 50 companies listed on the VSE. The singer Kenny Colman said of Pezim: "Murray's a throwback, the last of Damon Runyan characters. He's a real Guys and Dolls character. If he wanted, he could have been a movie impresario, like Louis B. Mayer...That was Murray. Always promoting. It was never the money, it was always the action. When Murray's not in the action, he's dying." Pezim suffered from bipolar disorder, which explained much of his maniacal, hyperactive personality along with his obsessive need for media attention and extremely reckless behavior. The American anthropologist Emily Martin observed that CEOs with bipolar depression tend to be flamboyant characters known for seeking publicity along with rash decision-making. Martin listed Pierre Karl Péladeau, Richard Branson, and Ted Turner as other examples of CEOs with bipolar disorder. ==B.C. Lions owner==

In 1989, Pezim purchased the BC Lions Canadian Football League team. Faced with the team going bankrupt, the premier of British Columbia, Bill Vander Zalm, was heard to say: "Time to bring in the Pez". The lawyer and politician Roy McMurtry who was serving as an adviser to Vander Zalm expressed some concern about the choice of Pezim as he was lobbying the province at the time to build a highway to the remote Eskay Creek gold deposit located in the mountains in northern-western British Columbia close to the American border. With the support of the provincial government, Pezim purchased the B.C. Lions on 7 September 1989 in order to keep the team in Vancouver. Pezim purchased the Lions at a discount for $1.7 million. Pezim did not release the news of the encouraging drilling results at Eskay Creek in 1989 in order to buy more shares in the Prime Resources and Calpine companies, which owned the rights to Eskay Creek, and then announced the news of the discovery of gold at Eskay Creek. In a review of Well's book the journalist Brian Fawcett wrote: "The Vancouver Stock Exchange is well known for being North America's fiscal approximation of Planet of the Apes, and Pezim has long been its alpha gorilla...Wells falls for Pezim's perpetually adolescent, wounded-entrepreneur persona. (She's not alone in this. The entire West Coast media have followed Pezim around over the last five years, doting on every silly note he plays as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamelin.) What she misses, in this oddly sympathetic portrait of a very strange man, is that Pezim is the perfect metaphor for the Vancouver Stock Exchange, and for all the stock exchanges around the world." A October 1991 profile in Sports Illustrated described him as: "Up in the owner’s box at Vancouver’s B.C. Place stadium, during a Canadian Football League game involving the British Columbia Lions, an old fat guy is on his feet. On his hands are huge orange mittens that look like lion paws. He is waving them and growling like a lion in support of the Lions. Fans look up at him with a mixture of amusement, amazement, bewilderment and contempt. He is Murray Pezim, 70. He owns the Lions. He knows nothing about football. Never mind, says Pezim. ‘I’m a natural, kooky owner.'" The BC MPP Bill Reid stated: "If Murray hadn't stepped in and bought this team before last season, the Lions would have failed, and without Vancouver, there is no CFL. So all he did was save the league. He came to the party, became the messiah, and very few know." Pezim died of a heart attack in 1998. The journalist Clyde Woolman wrote that Pezim damaged the image of the VSE between the 1960s to the 1990s as she wrote: "The often swashbuckling, sometimes outrageous style of the likes of Nelson Skalbania and Murray Pezim sucked up newspaper print and did nothing to alter the exchange's image". In 1999, the VSE was shut down on the account of the high number of frauds on the exchange, which given the VSE the well deserved reputation as "the scam capital of the world". ==Books and articles==

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