A year ago, if you were looking to place a bet on which big-name Canadian CEO was most likely to get the boot in 2009, Don Lindsay might well have topped the list.
His company, Teck Resources Ltd. , was on the brink, and about to collapse under a $9.8-billion (U.S.) debt load it had managed to incur on the eve of the global financial crisis.
Mr. Lindsay had pulled the trigger on an uncontested $14-billion (Canadian) takeover of Fording Canadian Coal Trust at the worst possible time and many shareholders were calling for his head.
Yet gambling on the demise of Mr. Lindsay and Canada's biggest base metal miner would have proven a foolish bet.
A year later, Teck has been saved. Its shares have gained more than 560 per cent in the last 12 months. Mr. Lindsay has been the key architect of the astonishing revival, manipulating the pieces of a highly complex jigsaw puzzle of deals, asset sales and financings that have cemented the Vancouver company's survival. If demand for coal and copper remain strong, Teck is poised to thrive.
"Would I have liked to have not had to live through the last year? Absolutely. Who would? But in the end, we honoured our word," Mr. Lindsay says.
For an executive who spent much of the year on the chopping block, he looks amazingly serene as he sits down for an interview in Toronto earlier last month. And why shouldn't he?
The whirlwind of triage needed to save the company is finally over. In just 18 months, Teck cut staff and the company dividend, sold more than $1.5-billion worth of assets, won a reprieve from its lenders, pulled off a $4.2-billion (U.S.) junk bond sale, paid off a monstrous $5.8-billion bridge loan and struck a key $1.74-billion (Canadian) investment deal with China's hulking sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp. (CIC).
"All the noise from last year is kind of behind us. People are looking forward. It's a clean company. It has a growth story. The world is kind of coming our way," he says.
It was a very different situation in late 2008, when Mr. Lindsay had to give comfort to the Canadian banks exposed to Teck's crippling debt load.
From Teck's Vancouver headquarters, Mr. Lindsay flew to Toronto and personally met with the CEOs of four of Canada's five largest banks. His job was to soothe their concerns and outline the steps that Teck would take over the next year to escape its debt debacle.
"The world was in freefall and nobody knew where the bottom was. The key, and I know this from previous experience [as an investment banker at CIBC World Markets] is that when you go to the banks you have to give them confidence. You have to have a plan that you can execute and that they can believe in," he explains.
During four meetings in less than 24 hours, Mr. Lindsay pitched Teck's 12-step plan to kick its leverage problem. If not relieved, the big bank CEOs could at least see a possible way for Teck to emerge from its debt dilemma.
"One of them said to me, 'I'm glad you're here Don because you're over my limit. You are my biggest exposure and I'm seeing my board tomorrow and I wouldn't know what to say. But the reality is, that I see you've got a plan. You are on step one and now I know,' " he says.
As each "step" in the plan was completed, Mr. Lindsay would call the bank CEOs to update Teck's progress.
For Mr. Lindsay, the final piece of the puzzle to get Teck back on solid financial footing was the deal with CIC in July. The Chinese fund acquired 17 per cent of Teck's B-class shares for $1.74-billion (Canadian). Now Teck is aligned with an entity that has unparalleled insight into the Chinese economy - the key driver of commodity demand.
CIC has already opened doors for Teck with introductions to Chinese steel producers who could become new customers for Teck's coal. If Teck decides to follow through with plans to boost annual coal production from its Western Canadian mines to 30 million tonnes from 20 million tonnes over the next five years, it will be with CIC's help in understanding China's coal needs.
The sovereign wealth fund could also become a financing partner with Teck on future acquisitions, although Mr. Lindsay is playing down the need for deals right now.
"If there is something we wanted to do, I'm sure they would look at it quite seriously. Right now we are their most successful investment. They are pretty happy with us and we are pretty happy with them," he says.
To be sure, Mr. Lindsay, the former investment banker, has learned plenty of lessons from Teck's survival of its annus horribilis. When mulling the Fording takeover, he concedes the company never considered an economic meltdown of the magnitude that occurred in late 2008 and 2009.
So in the deals ahead, Mr. Lindsay is sure to be more circumspect. While signs of recovery abound, he says the world has changed forever and another global crisis could be right around the corner.
"It could occur again. We recognize the interconnectedness, the speed of communications, 500 million cellphones in China," he explains.
"The world now has the ability for everybody to get simultaneously terrified and to just stop. That wasn't really possible before, but it is now. It could happen again."