Conrad Black

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Conrad Black, 2002.

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Conrad Blackis a Canadian-born British businessman who built one of the world’s largest newspaper groups in the 1990s, Hollinger International. In 2007 he was convicted of mail fraud and obstruction of justice, and he served time in jail.

After growing up in Toronto, Black studied history and political science at Carleton University in Ottawa (B.A., 1965), earned a law degree from Laval University in Quebec city (1970), and studied history at McGill University in Montreal (M.A., 1973). For his history thesis, he wrote a biography of former Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis; published in 1977, it came to be considered a definitive work.

Black entered the newspaper industry in 1967 as part owner of two small Quebec weeklies; he continued to acquire smaller Canadian papers, cofounded the Sterling Newspapers Group (1971), and by 1972 owned 21 local papers across Canada. In 1978 Black assumed control of Argus Corp., an investment holding corporation in which his father was a major shareholder. At the time, Argus held controlling interests in several Canadian corporations, including Hollinger Mines, Dominion Stores (a grocery chain), Standard Broadcasting, and Massey Ferguson (a farm equipment company). Wishing to reposition the firm in the newspaper business, Black transformed Argus into an operating company by divesting shares of Massey Ferguson and dismantling Dominion Stores. Hollinger Mines then became the principal shareholder of Argus, and the name of the corporation was changed in 1986 to Hollinger Inc. A dispute arose in 1986 when Hollinger withdrew more than $60 million (Canadian) in surplus from the Dominion Stores pension fund. Although the transaction had been approved by the Pension Commission of Ontario, Hollinger eventually settled by sharing the surplus with the Dominion Stores employees.

Black received the Order of Canada in 1990 and became a member of the Privy Council of Canada in 1992. By the mid-1990s he had built Hollinger into the third largest newspaper group in the world and controlled nearly 250 newspapers worldwide, including the London Daily Telegraph (acquired controlling interest in 1985), the Fairfax Group in Australia (1985), The Jerusalem Post (acquired 1989), Southam Press in Canada (1996), the Chicago Sun-Times (1996), and roughly 100 smaller newspapers in the United States.

By tradition, the owner of the Telegraph is entitled to a peerage, but, when the British government proposed honouring Black, a Canadian citizen, with a baronetcy in 1999, the Canadian government blocked it, citing the Nickel Resolution (1919), a somewhat inconsistently enforced rule preventing Canadian citizens from receiving such honours. Some speculated that the relatively liberal Canadian government was punishing Black for the conservative political views expressed in his newspapers. Largely to pay off debt, Black proceeded to sell all of Hollinger’s Canadian interests over the next two years. In 2001, after becoming a British citizen and renouncing his Canadian citizenship, he was created Lord Black of Crossharbour (after a London Metro stop near the Telegraph’s offices).

Two years later Black stepped down as CEO of Hollinger International, Inc.—a move that followed the discovery that Hollinger executives had been paid more than $32 million (U.S.) in noncompete fees (for agreeing not to engage in a competing business) without board approval. Hollinger president David Radler both arranged and profited from the fees, and Black was at the centre of the controversy, having received at least $7 million. Black was also criticized for charging an estimated $9 million in research costs for his book Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (2003) to Hollinger.

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Conrad Black following a federal court hearing, 2007.

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In November and December of 2005, U.S. federal prosecutors charged Black with several counts of fraud, racketeering, and obstruction of justice (his longtime business associate Radler had pleaded guilty to mail fraud in September 2005). Black was found guilty of mail fraud and obstruction of justice in 2007. He was sentenced to six and a half years in a federal prison and fined $125,000. While his defenders portrayed him as a brilliant newspaper manager who had been wrongly charged, Black’s critics said he structured deals and defrauded shareholders solely for his own benefit. In 2010 he was granted bail while he appealed, and later that year two of his fraud convictions were overturned. In 2011 his sentence was reduced to three and a half years, and Black returned to prison in September. He was released in May 2012. In 2019 he was pardoned by U.S. Pres. Donald Trump, who called Black a “friend.” The previous year Black had written the book Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.

Black often published commentaries on politics and business and was a columnist for Toronto’s Globe and Mail: Report on Business. He also wrote several other biographical works, including Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full (2007), and an autobiography, A Life in Progress (1993).