Paul Reichmann Built Canary Wharf With Canadian Money. Why Did It Bankrupt Him?

One Canada Square was finished in nineteen ninety-one and it stood more than half empty. Fifty storeys of Canadian-financed office tower on a disused dock in east London, the tallest building in Britain, with a pyramid on the roof and almost nobody in the lifts. Ten months later the company that built it was in administration. Olympia and York was a private family firm from Toronto, it was the largest property developer in the world, it owed something close to twenty billion dollars, and it had already promised four hundred million pounds of that money to a railway it would never live to use. The missing railway is the whole story. Not the recession, not the vanity, not the pyramid. A property developer can buy land, pour concrete, hire an architect and let offices. The one thing a property developer cannot build is the underground line that decides whether the land is worth anything. Here is the ground we are going to cover. Where the Reichmann family came from and how a tile importing business in Toronto became the biggest private landlord in New York. What they bought in Manhattan in nineteen seventy-seven and what it was worth five years later. There is a new piece of Canadian financial history on this channel every day, and subscribing means the next one finds you. Then the part that does the real work. What the British government actually offered on the Isle of Dogs and why the offer was a tax allowance rather than a grant. The four hundred million pounds for the Jubilee Line Extension. Why a company with twenty billion dollars of debt and no published accounts could not be rescued by anybody, and who ended up owning the place when it finally filled up. Start in Hungary, because the method matters more than the buildings and the method is older than Canada. Samuel and Renee Reichmann were an Orthodox Jewish family from Beled, a small town in western Hungary. They left for Vienna in the nineteen twenties, left Vienna for Paris when Austria was annexed, and left Paris for Tangier in nineteen forty. Tangier in the war was an international zone, which meant no single government controlled its banking, and Samuel Reichmann ran a currency exchange business there. A money changer in a city where every currency in Europe was moving and none of it legally is a particular education. What that business taught, and what the sons carried out of it, was that the price of an asset and the value of an asset are different numbers, and that the gap between them opens widest when everybody else is frightened. The family came to Canada in the nineteen fifties and settled in Toronto. Three sons, Albert, Paul and Ralph, started an importing business bringing in bathroom and floor tiles, called the Olympia Trading Company, selling to the builders putting up the Toronto suburbs. ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 Fifty Storeys And Nobody In The Lifts 1:04 New york 1:55 Tangier To Toronto 4:40 Building It Themselves 6:08 The Deal Of The Century 7:42 Let Before It Existed 9:31 Nobody Could See The Whole 10:34 What Containers Did To The Docks 12:23 Westminster 15:04 The American Who Could Not Finance It 16:14 Britain 19:11 The City Changed Its Mind 21:44 The Shape Of The Borrowing 24:46 Eleven Banks And An Estate 26:23 Who Owns It Now 🔎 IN THIS VIDEO LONDON · NEW YORK · WESTMINSTER · BRITAIN · BANK OF ENGLAND ❓ QUICK ANSWERS • Fifty Storeys And Nobody In The Lifts — One Canada Square was finished in nineteen ninety-one and it stood more than half empty. • Tangier To Toronto — Start in Hungary, because the method matters more than the buildings and the method is older than Canada. • The Deal Of The Century — Nineteen seventy-seven, New York, and this is the transaction that made the Reichmanns famous. New York City had come within days of bank… • Let Before It Existed — Battery Park City came next, and it is the dress rehearsal for London in every detail. • Nobody Could See The Whole — By the middle nineteen eighties the family was the largest commercial landlord in New York, the largest developer in Toronto, and was buy… • What Containers Did To The Docks — The Port of London was the largest port in the world for most of the nineteenth century, and the Isle of Dogs was the heart of it. Canadian Wealth Architect tells the stories behind Canada’s money — the booms, the frauds and the fortunes that built the country. Subscribe:    / @thecanadianwealtharchitect   ▶ WATCH NEXT: Ron Joyce Paid Tim Horton's Widow $1 Million for Half the Chain. What Was It Actually Worth? —    • Видео   🔗 MORE FROM US British Wealth Architect:    / @thebritishwealtharchitect   American Wealth Architect:    / @theamericanwealtharchitect   Australian Wealth Architect:    / @theaustralianwealtharchitect   🖼 Original illustration, including AI-assisted artwork. #History #Finance #Economics