SSL's $200,000 powerboatA couple of points that struck me in the Ottawa Citizen article below:
1. Hexo employees took a 50% pay cut in 2016 to keep Hexo alive
2. SSL was piloting his $200,000 powerboat - at his cottage on Lac Mavgregor 3 years later (purchased in 2017?)
This sums the SSL story up pretty well I think, the Visionary - as the Giggly Girl Cult Club refers to him - living large on the backs on employees AND INVESTORS.
God Bless SSL
"HEXO, the cannabis firm originally known as Hydropothecary, contemplated death in 2014, when it failed at first to secure a medical marijuana sales licence from Health Canada, then again in 2016, when a promised purchase by Canadian Cannabis Corp. never materialized.
Faced with not being able to make payroll, the founders sent out pleas to Dr. Michael Munzar, an early investor, and Rajan Govindarajan, a relative of Miron’s. HEXO staff accepted 50 per cent pay cuts to stretch out the day of reckoning.This
This, according to their autobiography, Billion Dollar Start-Up, co-written by Julie Beun and published earlier this year.
In 2017, after achieving a stock listing on the TSX Venture exchange, HEXO was nearly felled by a product recall.
St-Louis kept pushing the envelope — and the company’s attendant risks. He returned to the stock markets again and again for funds to finance HEXO’s aggressive expansion after the federal Liberals signalled they would legalize recreational marijuana.
Author Beun recounts a revealing moment in June 2019, when St-Louis is piloting his $200,000 powerboat near his cottage on Lac McGregor, north of Gatineau. “To really make a difference globally, we need to be a Fortune 500 (corporation),” St-Louis is saying. “We need to stay at the helm, accelerate and keep driving. HEXO becoming a $5-billion or $10-billion company is happening, with or without us.”
Fast forward to Dec. 14, when HEXO — under new management — unveiled plans to once more stave off imminent disaster."