Sultan Cabbani:T.Matthews:2 good background articles:
( many have seen these before )
Tech Web
data.com
Upside today
ENee
upside.com
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Also on Article from Macleans in 1997.Very prescient.
Why Canada needs Terry Matthews as PM
Last week's announcement that Newbridge Networks Corp. of Kanata, Ont., is planning to nearly double its
2,800-employee workforce over the next four years was vintage Matthews.
Terry Matthews, the Welsh wizard who controls and runs Newbridge, was nowhere in sight, allowing his executives to deliver
the good news. It is not that he has a vague dislike of media attention, it is that he feels allergic to public attention of any kind,
does not need it, and shies away from journalists as if they were killer bees. "If you're not careful," Matthews told me earlier
this year, "you end up like a Michael Jackson and can't even walk into a restaurant without being bugged to death. That's why
I hate it and typically don't talk to anybody."
That's a pity, because Terry Matthews is the most remarkable member of Canada's burgeoning high-tech industry. Newbridge,
formed in 1986 out of the wreckage of Mitel Corp., which Matthews had founded a decade earlier (with Michael Cowpland,
who now heads Corel Corp.), has set records in every earnings category. Sales mainly of its ATM digital switches, which are
used to transmit images, data and voice messages across telephone or fibre-optic lines, hit $1 billion in 1996 and, with profits
growing at 30 per cent a year, revenues are due to reach $3 billion by decade's end. The company's stock--which reached a
new high of $71 last week--is distributed through generous participation plans to senior employees and has already created at
least 60 Newbridge millionaires. "You must share," says Matthews. "You share information, you share the riches that come
along, you share the vision. Our directors, by the way, don't get paid for attending meetings. They get share options for being
helpful to me. That instantly puts their brains in the right direction, because if the company doesn't do well and grow, they get
nothing."
Less than half of Newbridge's payroll is spent at its head office, in Kanata, just 30 km west of Parliament Hill. Although he
could clearly operate out of any pleasant corner of the industrial world, Matthews is demonstrating his confidence in the
Ottawa region by trebling the size of the company's existing office and research facilities to 160,000 square metres. Newbridge
operations have also spread to the United States, Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. About 16 months ago, the
company formed a marketing and technological partnership with the German industrial giant Siemens AG, which recorded
sales of $70 billion last year and patented 5,000 new inventions.
Matthews has also created eight major affiliated high-tech companies that operate nearby, turning out allied products and
technologies. Matthews is a director of each of these offspring, holding 30 per cent of their shares through Newbridge. Many
are growing as fast as their parent, throwing off large gushers of profit and creating even more jobs as they expand. (The
affiliates, incidentally, build their plants on land owned by Kanata Research Park Corp., a real estate company owned by, you
guessed it, Terry Matthews.) "We now have about 20,000 customers at Newbridge, so that when one of them is contacted by
one of our associated companies, the associate gains instant credibility. If the 'Noogie Poogie corporation' were to approach
France Telecom, for example, they'd probably be told, 'We'll call you, don't call us.' "
While MPs cry for more jobs, high-tech companies are quietly creating them, right under the
politicians' noses
A supremely self-confident closet extrovert, Matthews possesses the Welsh gift of speaking in a magnificent baritone voice,
and has the expressive hand gestures to go with it. Despite his non-existent public persona, he easily takes the stage at internal
occasions, hypnotizing clients, employees and investors alike with his Dylan Thomas ways. Like the late Welsh
poet-performer, he climbs tables at Christmas parties to sing or lecture, but enjoys few leisure activities except golf (on a
championship course he is building near his Welsh birthplace), and traveling abroad.
A committed family man, he exercises frugal ways, despite his riches, estimated by the Times of London at $2 billion. His
wife, Anne, ran the company's lunch canteen long after Newbridge's sales had exceeded $1 billion, and could be spotted
around Kanata, feeling heads of lettuce to make sure they were fresh for her sandwiches. The Matthews' main residence is
inside a 20-acre, privately guarded compound in Kanata.
The Newbridge chairman is stern and intimidating when seated behind his desk. "I look for people who can relate to me well,"
he says. "I don't look for people who are the least bit flaky. They must have a hard work ethic, and if they don't, they stand out
around here very quickly." At the same time as Newbridge was announcing its dramatic plans, Northern Telecom let it be
known that it intends to grow even faster in the Ottawa region, adding at least 1,200 new workers annually to its huge Nepean
research facilities over the next five years. Between them, the two companies will be expanding their payrolls by nearly 10,000.
Added to the 42,000 already employed by the high-tech companies in the Ottawa area, that will go a long way to fulfilling a
recent prophecy by Peter Clark, chairman of the regional municipal government, that there soon would be more local
employment in high-tech than in government.
It's one of the great ironies of Canadian politics that, while MPs in the House of Commons scream at one another about
creating "JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!", only a few kilometres away the lords of high-tech industry are doing precisely that--and
getting scant credit for it.
We obviously need Terry Matthews as prime minister: he would get the job done, and we would never have to listen to him
speak.
MACLEAN'S / JULY 28, 1997
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