Second chances
W. Brett Wilson has said that his biggest professional regret is bailing on John Wright too soon. Now, he may have the chance to make amends
When he was younger, Max Fawcett wanted to make a mint in the markets. Now as the managing editor of Alberta Venture he gets to write about them. Close enough, right? He can be reached at mfawcett@albertaventure.com
by Max Fawcett
On Tuesday, PetroBakken announced that W. Brett Wilson was joining the company’s board of directors. As of noon today, PetroBakken’s stock was up more than eight per cent for the week.
No, the surge in the underperforming company’s stock wasn’t entirely due to Wilson’s addition to the board. It also released its capital spending program for 2012, announced that it would not be reducing the dividend it pays out to shareholders and created additional financial maneuvering room by creating a dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP) that will allow shareholders to take their monthly dividend in shares rather than cash.
But Wilson’s presence on the board has to be considered a good sign all the same, given his track record in the oil and gas industry. And his decision to work with PetroBakken is something of a second chance for him, given that he describes CEO John Wright as one of his “best friends” and his decision to sell his investment in Petrobank (PetroBakken’s parent company) as the biggest mistake of his career.
“It was around 1999,” he told Canadian Business in a September 2011 interview. “The stock went back to $1.50, so I struggled with it for a while, then it started to take off and it hit four bucks. There was a management dispute, a couple buddies got into a dispute, and I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to just get out of the way and just watch,’ so I sold it all between $3.50 and $4. Not a bad return. But the stock hit $45, $50, $60 before splitting off pieces—the package is probably worth $100 today. I had invested in the person, and my mistake was letting go of the person too soon. I made a lot of money by anybody’s math, but what I walked away from was several hundred million dollars on that portfolio alone.”
For more on PetroBakken, read Alberta Venture’s September 2011 story
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