The Caisse de dépôt paid US $ 75 million ($ 98.9 million) to buy the last shares of Guy Laliberté in Cirque du Soleil in February 2020.
• Read also: How many millions of dollars did the Caisse pay Guy Laliberté?
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This was revealed by Charles Émond, the big boss of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, in the public finance committee at the National Assembly.
Questioned by the Liberal MP for Pontiac, André Fortin, and the solidarity MP for Rosemont, Vincent Marissal, Charles Émond tried to justify the logic of this investment which a few months later is no longer worth anything.
The Caisse has already announced that it had written off its entire investment in Cirque, which amounted to $ 228 million.
Charles Émond insisted that the Caisse de dépôt could not have predicted in mid-February that the coronavirus pandemic would spread across the planet and affect the Circus to this extent. “No facts validated [à ce moment] the possibility of a pandemic, ”he argued.
According to him, when the Caisse bought the interest of the founder of the Cirque, only one Cirque show had been canceled in China.
“We are not happy about that,” he commented about this investment.
Charles Émond also admitted that the price paid for Guy Laliberté’s 10% interest in February was roughly the same as that paid by the Caisse for its other Cirque shares acquired in 2015.
Despite everything, according to him, this price took into account reduced projections of growth and profitability for the Circus compared to 2015. The entertainment sector enjoyed favorable market assessments before the pandemic, according to the boss of the Quebecois woolen sock. .
Charles Émond said that the Caisse had decided to increase its interest in Cirque to 20% in February 2020 to have more control over the orientations of the company which he considered too indebted and too far removed from its core business.
Solidarity MP Vincent Marissal spoke of two Quebec flagships withered (the Caisse and the Cirque) due to this transaction.
Quebec Finance Minister Éric Girard, for his part, admitted that this investment by the Caisse was not a good investment.
In response to a question from PQ MP Martin Ouellet, the big boss of the Caise indicated that he had not received pressure from Quebec to carry out this transaction. He did not want to come forward either as to why Guy Laliberté had decided to sell his shares just before the pandemic. “It is not for me to speculate why Guy Laliberté wanted to sell”, he commented.
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