PROFILE
BUSINESS SNAPSHOT
FRANK STRONACH
His plans for the future WORDS: GILES ANDERSON PHOTOS: GILES ANDERSON & The Stronach Group
F
RANK Stronach is in town. His black Mercedes-Benz is parked at the entrance to the Gulfstream Park paddock. It’s 10 in the morning, and no one is around. Finding Stronach is like finding a needle in haystack, but eventually I find my way to the racetrack’s corporate offices, nestled on the side of the main grandstand complex, up on the 4th floor. Stronach is sitting in the boardroom, the door of which is marked simply “Chairman.” The room is a rather sparse area, dominated by a large glass table
Stronach (left) and his early business partner, Tony Czapka 38
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with various papers in the corner and a healthy supply of tablets and mobile phones. For Stronach, I suspect that interviews must be a rather routine affair. As someone who has been running businesses for more than 60 years, he must have heard virtually all the questions that could be thrown at him. But as I find out, Stronach is an incredibly personable and thoughtful interviewee. He’s passionate about his past and I’m pleased that I had taken the time to read his autobiography, The Magna Man. I can say that it’s well worth a read, not only as a window into Stronach’s remarkable life story, but also for its nuggets of business genius.
BUILDING HIS BUSINESS We start with Stronach telling me a little about his past: his upbringing in Austria, his working-class background, and how he lived under two dictatorships – Hitler and then Stalin. He also tells me how he made his way to Canada, but could just as easily have found his way to Australia or the U.S., had those countries come through first with a visa. He arrived in Canada in 1954 with one hundred bucks in his back pocket. Times were tough getting a foot on the proverbial ladder. “I was hungry and had no money to buy food. When you reach that point, it leaves a deep impression.” Eventually, Stronach found work as a toolmaker, working with metal and essentially building “things”. It was exactly 60 years ago when he started his first business, a one-man tool and die shop. This small company began producing car parts and grew to become the most diversified automotive parts supplier in the world