SOMETHING TO REMEMBER: It's 10 years since former Intrawest sales director Ross McCredie, then 37, approached New York-based Cendant Corp for Canadian rights to the Sotheby's International Realty title it had licensed from Sotheby's Auction House.
He had few bargaining chips: "I wasn't a real-estate broker, I didn't own a brokerage, I was young, and I'd had a head injury."
That was from when the high-jump champion and iron-man competitor was hit by a car beside Whistler's Shit Happens mountain-bike trail. He woke up in St. Paul's hospital with a broken neck, an ear almost ripped off, his face and upper body filled with glass shards "and memory that took six months to come back." A year earlier, seven weeks and multiple surgeries were needed to reconstruct his face following a skiing accident that also perforated his bowel.
Knowing that Sotheby's Auction House would have final word on Cendant's decision, McCredie pitched its brass on assembling a company of "navy seals" who could represent the top-level international clients they wanted. By May, 2005, he and 20 employees were in business "without a single listing, not a lot of money, and determined that franchising would totally destroy the brand." Today, 30 offices house 1,000 staff, including 400 realtors. "And I know every one," said McCredie, who retains one from perhaps 30 applicants: "We hire slowly and fire quickly. I'm a control freak about the brand and what we do."
What McCredie did himself was launch the Student Travel Services firm at age 18, sell it at 22, sail the Caribbean on what was to have been a world tour, co-found other travel businesses and have then-Intrawest boss Joe Houssian send him to sell units in Invermere's Panorama Mountain Village resort. Rebounding to the Whistler sales-director job in $600-million-sales-year 2001, he saw such exuberance as 37 Four Seasons private residences sell in 45 minutes for $1,209 a square foot. Houssian also introduced McCredie to future wife Kristi.
Today, McCredie is also COO of Montreal-based 360 VOX Corp., co-founded by president-CEO Robin Conners, that acquired Sotheby's in 2012. In May 2014, minority owner and chair Ned Goodman steered 360 VOX into the Dundee Corp. he heads in a deal that valued the firm at $55.3 million and provided consideration of $45.5 to other shareholders. The change created a global real-estate fund able to acquire major international developments. They include Croatian oceanfront projects worth $800 million and perhaps $2.5 billion respectively, and a $4-billion-range scheme with 50,000 homes in China. Other projects include the former Intrawest Edenarc 1800 resort at Mont Blanc, and a proposed, $600-million-range hotel-casino complex with Paragon Development Corp. beside BC Place.
THEY DO: The world's 19th-richest individual dined with 1,199 in the Vancouver Convention Centre Saturday. Lee Shau-kee, 86, was fourth-richest before Hong Kong reverted to China in 1997. That decline aside, a $22.7-billion personal fortune still gives the Hong Kong-based Henderson Land Development company's 62-per-cent owner plenty of clout. It also made him a desirable guest for the $350-million, media-and-property Fairchild Group founder, Thomas Fung at the marriage of Fung's 32-year-old son Joseph to Michelle Tam Saturday. Lee was doubtless no less pleased to see Henderson stock trading at HKD$45.15, up 24 per cent since March. Ditto its 2014 and 2015 revenues being projected slightly above 2013's HKD$23.3 billion and much above 2012's HKD$15.6 billion.