Page 27 - Bloomberg Businessweek-October 29, 2018

Bloomberg Businessweek October 29, 2018

with the license plate APO KAY. His old workspace had also is already shrinking its footprint, shedding assets and cut-
been next to Sherman’s, separated by an anteroom contain- ting off product lines. In mid-July it sold its European generics
ing a lab bench that Sherman used to experiment with for- business to India’s Aurobindo Pharma Ltd., and it has hired
mulations. The men sometimes communicated by yelling consultants from McKinsey & Co. to standardize its financial
across the space, and after hours they would sit together for records and streamline operations.
friendly debates, often about religion. Kay shared Sherman’s Even while Sherman was alive, Kay said, “the plan was,
atheism but didn’t think his friend needed to be so strident eventually we’d have to sell the business, and we’d sell to
about it. someone that would keep the jobs in Canada … and we’d take
Kay had been in New York to see Andrea Bocelli perform less money for the right guarantees”—at least for a few years.
at the time the Shermans were killed. He was still stunned, “You can’t rule from the grave.”
reduced to open-ended speculation about what had happened.
“I knew 99 percent of what Barry was engaged in, and none of VII. OLD HAUNTS
it makes any sense,” he said. “What did they do, either Barry
or Honey or together, that enraged someone to do what they The Shermans retain a ghostly ubiquity in Toronto. One day
did?” He wondered if there may have been “some commit- while I was in town, I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario, the
ment that he made that he didn’t live up to, because the person city’s largest art museum, to check out a much-heralded show
that he made the commitment to didn’t deliver on his side.” of works by the abstract painters Joan Mitchell and Jean-Paul
Perhaps, he continued, that person “might have made prom- Riopelle. On a wall above the canvasses in the first room of
ises to someone else, and reacted in rage.” the exhibition, I saw the silvery lettering: “Honey & Barry
I asked Kay if he thought he’d ever know the truth. “No,” Sherman Gallery.” Later, at an event for the United Way, I
he replied. “There’s only one possibility: that someone will spotted their names heading a roster of big-ticket donors.
be convicted of a crime in Toronto, and when it comes time Near the city’s northern boundary, a crane towered
for sentencing will say, ‘I have information.’ That’s the only over the Sherman Campus, a vast Jewish community cen-
hope. And I’ll probably be long dead when that happens.” ter under going extensive renovation. The couple was laid to
Sometimes, Kay said, “I sit up and look at his picture, and rest nearby, in a cemetery slotted between concrete apart-
my mind just goes blank.” ment complexes and a high-voltage transmission corridor. 55
It hadn’t been easy for Kay to restore normalcy at Apotex, The day I visited was bright and blustery, with a hint of
and not only because of Sherman’s death. Much of the gener- winter still in the air. There was no obvious directory, and
ics industry is in crisis, squeezed on one side by buyers’ I asked a groundskeeper for help. He knew immediately
demands for lower prices and on the other by hungry rivals, where to go. The graves were in a distant section of the cem-
mostly from India, which are rapidly building market share. etery, so he gave me a lift on his green riding mower, past
Sherman never took outside capital, and he owned more tombstones marked with names such as Schoenbach, Levy,
than 90 percent of Apotex’s shares—a holding that’s passed Ritter, and Kahn. Jewish families often wait as long as a year
to his children, none of whom works in the business. Proud to place stones, and the Shermans’ plots were marked only
of his roots, he maintained far more of the company’s pro- by twin plastic plates supplied by the funeral home: Barry
duction in high-cost, high-wage Canada than less sentimen- on the left, Honey on the right. On the grass between, some-
tal owners would have countenanced. More than half of what one had left a few stems of white orchids.
Apotex makes comes from in and around Toronto, one of It looks increasingly unlikely that anyone will be arrested
North America’s most expensive cities. Some is produced in for their murders. There’s little sign of momentum in either
a warren of factory spaces surrounding Apotex headquar- the police or private investigations; a person close to the fam-
ters; more comes from an iceberg of beige concrete several ily said recent police updates have tended to cover leads that
miles west, which occupies most of a city block and churns haven’t panned out.
out 9 billion pills a year. Sherman loomed uncommonly large in the lives of people
For the moment, Kay told me, he was trying to fulfill around him: for D’Angelo, as a generous benefactor, loyal to
Sherman’s legacy by “keeping the company moving forward a fault; for Winter, as an object of consuming rage; for Kay, as
until the beneficia- a partner and intimate friend. All of them, and the broader
ries decide what they community of which Barry and Honey were so much a part,
want to do.” Many will probably have to come to terms with never knowing what
in the drug indus- happened at 50 Old Colony Rd. last December—with an end-
try expect that deci- ing known only to its authors. The Shermans had every rea-
sion will be to sell son to expect that they controlled their future, until the
Apotex, whether to a moment they didn’t, when the boundaries that surrounded
competitor or a cost- two distinguished lives became suddenly, terrifyingly per-
cutting private equity meable. <BW> �With Yaacov Benmeleh, Cynthia Koons, and
Kay and Sherman in 1999 buyer. The company Natalie Wong