Weston family shifts private investing strategy after $6.9-billion Selfridges sale

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The billionaire Weston family is reshaping its personal investment strategy to finance more innovative areas of the global economy, including clean energy, early-stage technology companies and disruptive retail and consumer products companies.

The makeover follows the passing of patriarch W. Galen Weston two years ago.

The Weston family, one of Canada’s wealthiest, is best known as the controlling shareholder of publicly traded grocery giant Loblaw Cos. Ltd. L-T. The company has sharply boosted earnings under the leadership of Mr. Weston’s son Galen G. Weston in recent years, while defending itself, along with other retailers, from consumer criticism over the skyrocketing price of food, which has outpaced inflation.

But the family also owns billions of dollars worth of private assets through its holding company, Wittington Investments Ltd. That vast private portfolio is undergoing an extreme makeover.

Wittington is looking to redeploy the proceeds of its estimated $6.9-billion sale of British luxury retail company Selfridges & Co. in late 2021, into more innovative opportunities.

Last September, Jane Segal joined Wittington as managing director for fund investments – a role that will see her deploy money to outside private-capital fund managers – following a stint building and leading the external managers program at the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan.

This month, Zvi Orvitz joined Wittington as another managing director after building and leading the energy sector unit of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan’s private-capital division. During his 15 years at Teachers, Mr. Orvitz led private-equity buyouts and growth-equity investments in “energy and power, sustainability and the energy transition,” according to his LinkedIn biography. He has been tasked with leading the family’s investments in companies participating in the energy sector’s green transition.

Wittington is also working with an outside recruiter to hire a third managing director to make private-equity and growth-equity investments in disruptive retail and consumer products companies, a source familiar with the matter said. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source as they are not authorized to discuss the matter.

The Weston family company has also expanded its support for early-stage technology companies. Wittington started its own in-house venture capital unit in 2019, committing $100-million to tech startups, with one-third of the funding coming from Loblaw.

Wittington Ventures, led by veteran private-capital investor Jim Orlando – previously a partner with OMERS Ventures – has since backed several early-stage companies. They include California-based driverless truck developer Gatik, whose vehicles are being tested by Loblaw, and Canadian startups Qui Identity, an online identity-authentication provider, and Odaia Intelligence Inc., which uses artificial intelligence to help pharmaceutical companies promote drugs to health care practitioners.

Now, Wittington is investing out of a second, $120-million venture-capital fund, which it quietly launched last fall. Loblaw committed half the capital to the new fund, according to the retailer’s public regulatory disclosures.

Wittington has effectively shifted from one luxury (retailers) to another: The ability to hire senior investment professionals from Canada’s pension-fund giants to launch alternative private-capital programs. That gives the Westons the ability and capacity to embark on investing strategies that only Canada’s largest institutional investors can afford to support.

The first signs of a shift in the Weston family’s investment strategy came after Galen G. Weston succeeded his father in September, 2016, as chief executive of George Weston Ltd. (GWL), the publicly traded company controlled by the family through Wittington, which in turn owns a controlling stake in Loblaw and Choice Properties Real Estate Investment Trust.

Wittington invested in health technology startup League Inc. in 2018 and backed the first, US$350-million fund, from Radical Ventures, a Canadian AI-focused venture capital firm. GWL invested in a consumer products-oriented venture capital fund led by Dragons’ Den star Arlene Dickinson in 2016.

But Wittington has stepped up its move into innovative areas of the economy since the passing of W. Galen Weston in April, 2021. The family holding company sold the 18-store Selfridges luxury retail group – which the elder Mr. Weston had built up over decades – late that year to Central Group of Thailand and Austrian real estate company Signa Group. Also in 2021, GWL sold its bakery operations, which had been the foundation of the family business since the 1880s.

The younger Mr. Weston took on the role of president in 2021, and that year recruited senior Bay Street lawyer Cornell Wright, former chair of corporate law with Torys LLP, to succeed long-time family lieutenant Pavi Binning as president of Wittington on Jan. 1, 2022. Loblaw in April said Mr. Weston plans to step back from day-to-day operations as it announced the hiring of European retail executive Per Bank as president and CEO. Mr. Weston will remain chairman of Loblaw, and has said he will remain deeply involved in the company’s strategic direction.

Mr. Wright and Wittington’s new investment leaders join a slew of at least 10 other outsiders who have joined the family holding company in the past two years, including Louise Porthouse, managing director of people and culture and a former vice-president of human resources for Canada with MasterCard; finance vice-president Jackie Yau, who previously held senior accounting roles with Dream Unlimited and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment; and several taxation and accounting executives. David Morris, a former chief financial officer of investment firm Gluskin Sheff, joined as CFO of Wittington last year.