technical. I formed Tristone with the mandate of being a technical global banking
firm, which was rare.”
The company has three components
(the “tri” in its name): property acquisitions
and divestitures, investment banking, and
capital markets. “We were the first firm to
combine oil and gas property acquisitions
and divestitures with investment banking.”
Tristone has seats on three major
stock exchanges, does research on 72
petroleum-producing basins, and has 20
datarooms to facilitate property sales. “In
any one week, we have $1- to $2-billion
worth of properties for sale.”
Tristone’s spectacular successes reflect
Gosbee’s exploitation of an important trend
in the petroleum industry—one that became
“Our clients wanted bankers who knew what was
going on under the ground and around the world.”
— George Gosbee, Tristone Capital Inc.
“It’s a client-driven strategy,” Gosbee
says. “Our clients wanted bankers who
knew what was going on under the ground
and around the world.”
And that’s what Tristone quickly came to
provide. Now the world’s largest independent energy advisory firm, Tristone has more
than 150 employees, of whom more than 40
are engineers, geologists, and geophysicists.
It has offices in London, Calgary, Houston,
Denver, and Buenos Aires.
increasingly clear in the 1990s. Briefly,
acquisitions have become a critical form of
reserves replacement. The industry can’t
replace reserves by the drill bit anymore, so
the number of transactions in the sector has
become easily the largest on the planet.
“Pharmaceutical companies don’t have
to acquire the assets of other companies to
stay in business,” Gosbee says, “and neither do other kinds of companies. Oil companies are the exception. They have to.”
CAMPAIGNER:
After the change of premiership in Alberta
at the end of 2006, the new government
under Ed Stelmach offered Gosbee two
important appointments—both of which
he accepted. He was asked to sit as a
board member on Alberta’s Economic
Development Authority. Created by former
premier Ralph Klein, the authority describes
itself as “a partnership that provides businesses with a direct working link to the
Alberta Government. A network of business
and industry sectors made up of private
sector volunteers work with government
to attract investment…and help generate
more wealth and employment for Alberta.”
More importantly, Stelmach also
invited Gosbee to serve as vice-chairman
of the Alberta Investment Management
Corporation. (Toronto-based TD Bank’s
Charles Baillie is chairman.) A Crown corporation with more than $70 billion of
Alberta’s assets under management, the
newly formed entity is one of the largest
public sector asset managers in Canada.
“This is rather exciting,” Gosbee says
with characteristic understatement. “Not
a lot of people get to have the experience
of helping create a Crown corporation.”
Notwithstanding the government’s evident confidence in him, when Alberta’s
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