Marshall Cohen

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Person.png Marshall Cohen  Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
(businessman, lawyer, financier)
Marshall Cohen.png
BornMarch 28, 1935
NationalityCanadian
EthnicityJewish
Alma materUniversity of Toronto, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Member ofBarrick Gold, Trilateral Commission
Corporate lawyer who did the ultra-rich, ultra-Orthodox Reichmann family a big favor while government minister; then started working for the Reichmanns. Bilderberg/1988.

Not to be confused with the mobster Mickey Cohen (1913-1976)

Marshall A. "Mickey" Cohen is a Canadian corporate lawyer and business executive who led some of Canada's most recognizable brands[1]. After doing the Reichmann family a good turn while minister, he became a key executive in the Reichmann family business empire.[2]

He attended the 1988 Bilderberg meeting and was a member of the Trilateral Commission.

Career

Marshall Cohen practiced law from 1960 to 1970, specializing in taxation, corporate finance and securities.[3]

From 1970 to 1985 he worked with the Government of Canada during which time his appointments included Deputy Minister of Energy; Deputy Minister of Industry Trade & Commerce; and Deputy Minister of Finance.

From 1988 to 1996 he was president & CEO of The Molson Companies Ltd.

He was a counsel at the Toronto law firm of Cassels Brock after 1996.

Fortune with the Reichmanns

In 1997 the New York Times told how Cohen had been generously rewarded by the Reichmann family for his services[4]


The ultra-Orthodox Reichmann brothers -- led by the supremely confident Paul, his judgment once reckoned to be infallible -- were sitting atop a family nest egg estimated to exceed $10 billion. Sole proprietors of the largest property company in Western history, they were ranked among the world's 10 richest families, The Reichmanns have been prodigiously generous to their fellow ultra-Orthodox. They have lavished hundreds of millions on yeshivas in Israel, Canada and the United States. But they did not endear themselves to Canada at large when they took advantage of an arcane tax loophole (the Little Egypt Bump, named after a Chicago stripper) in their $2.8 billion purchase of Gulf Canada in 1985. The tax break, which saved them $500 million, led to questions in Parliament. The Tory Government's Deputy Minister of Finance, Marshall (Mickey) Cohen, who had monitored the sweetheart deal, was hired by the Reichmanns two months later. Whether the timing, Mr. Bianco writes, was an example of naivete or Machiavellian calculation remained open to debate. . . . At a minimum, Cohen and Reichmann had flouted proscriptions against the appearance of conflict of interest.

The MP Mr. Ian Waddell pointed out how:

Further to that, he will recall these Liberal civil servants, people like Mickey Cohen, who fashioned the National Energy Program and who were wheeling and dealing with Petro-Canada when they took over Petro Fina and never really revealed, in spite of the Auditor General trying to get that information, what went on. These people just moved right out into the private sector, work for the Reichmanns and then take advantage of some of their own laws that they made when they worked for the Liberal government, ripping off the taxpayers in that way. The taxpayer gets screwed, it seems to me, by the laws of the former Liberal government and some of the people who were involved with them, who, as soon as they go into the private sector, rip off the ordinary Canadian who must pay taxes.[5]

Other positions

Cohen is a former International Councillor for The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a member of the Executive Committee of The British-North American Committee and a former member of the Trilateral Commission[6]. He is the Honorary Director of the C.D. Howe Institute.[7] He was also the Chairman of the International Trade Advisory Committee for the Government of Canada and is Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Schulich School of Business at York University.

Business positions


 

Event Participated in

EventStartEndLocation(s)Description
Bilderberg/19883 June 19885 June 1988Austria
Interalpen-Hotel
Telfs-Buchen
The 36th meeting, 114 participants
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References