Canadian Pharmaceuticals Billionaire And Wife Found Dead In Toronto Mansion
Canadian billionaire Bernard
“Barry” Sherman and his wife, Honey, were found dead in their Toronto home
Friday, and police are reportedly investigating their deaths as suspicious.
A spokesperson for Apotex, the generic drug giant Sherman started, confirmed
the couple’s deaths Friday. ”All of us at Apotex are deeply shocked and saddened
by this news and our thoughts and prayers are with the family at this
time,” a spokesperson for the company stated in an email.
Police were called to the Shermans’ home in Toronto just before noon on
Friday after two bodies — which turned out to be Sherman and his
wife — were found in the basement, The Globe
and Mail newspaper reported.
Sherman was age 75. He and his wife are survived by their 4 children.
In 1974, armed with a doctorate in rocket science from MIT, Sherman used his
mother’s life savings to buy his uncle’s drug company, which ultimately became
Apotex. Starting with two employees, he expanded the company to a workforce of
over 10,000. Sherman stepped down as CEO in 2014 but stayed on as chairman. At
the time of his death he had an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion, and was the
12th richest person in Canada. He has appeared on the Forbes list of the World’s
Billionaires for more than 15 years.
For years, though, Sherman had been plagued by an ongoing family drama. In
2007, three of his cousins and the widow of a fourth filed a lawsuit against
Sherman stating that he owed them $1 billion in damages and a 20% stake in
Apotex. The reason? The cousins are the children of the late Louis Winter, who
founded Empire Laboratories, the business Sherman acquired in 1967 after
Winter’s death. They claimed that they should have been paid royalties on four
products over a 15-year period, and that they should have had the right to
obtain employment through the company at 21 years old and a 5% stake in the
company at 23 years old. The original suit was dismissed in 2015 by the court
registrar, but was reinstated in 2016. In September an Ontario judge ruled in
favor of Sherman, and the cousins appealed the decision.
Apotex now sells over 260 generic drugs in more than 115 countries. Its
medicines are used to fill over 89 million prescriptions a year in Canada alone,
and annual global revenues are $1.5 billion. Apotex has said it plans to spend
$2 billion over the next decade to research new drugs. The company also makes
non-prescription drugs, disposable plastics and fine chemicals for medical
use.
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