Billionaire investor Murray Edwards leaves oilpatch, decamps from Calgary to London

Murray Edwards, the billionaire investor and elder statesman of Canada’s hard-hit oilpatch, has left his Calgary home and relocated to London.

Edwards’ move, that has been the source of speculation in Canada’s energy hub for weeks, was confirmed in a regulatory filing by Magellan Aerospace Corp., a Mississauga, Ontario-based aircraft manufacturer controlled by Edwards.

The 56-year-old’s residence is listed as London in the annual information form released by Magellan on Wednesday, compared with all of the Alberta a year earlier. He’s been a director of the company since 1995 and it is its largest shareholder, having a 74 per cent stake as of June, based on data compiled by Bloomberg. In prior regulatory documents for others which he’s a director, his residence have been listed as Calgary/Banff, Alberta. Edwards didn’t immediately return phone and e-mail messages on Thursday.

Edwards has been immersed in building the oil and natural gas industry in Canada for decades through investments and by advising on government policy. In order to be considered a non-resident by Canada for tax purposes, an individual must routinely live in another country or show they don’t have significant residential ties to Canada by staying in the country for less than 183 days annually.

Edwards’ move comes as a downturn in oil prices that has extended past 21 months is weighing on Canada’s producers and has contributed to thousands of job cuts within the nation’s energy industry. Canada’s oilsands are among the priciest reserves on the planet to develop.

At the same time, Alberta’s rich are facing a double hit of higher provincial and federal taxes this season. Lower levies had made Alberta an attractive climate for investment and now that advantage is gone, said Catherine Anne Brown, a law professor in the University of Calgary centered on tax matters.

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Top Earners

The Alberta government introduced a sliding scale including an 11.25 % rate for those who have the highest annual taxable income above $300,000 last October along with a 15 per cent rate starting in 2016. The Canadian authorities raised its tax rate to find the best earners to 33 percent in 2016, from 29 percent previously. Together, the combined rates for the biggest earners increased nine percentage suggests 48 percent.

“Exactly the same people that came here looking for attractive tax rates, they’re likely to be shopping elsewhere,” Brown said in a phone interview on Thursday. “I think we’ve shot inside us the foot if you take away the Alberta advantage.”

A native of Regina, Saskatchewan, Edwards has publicly reported holdings totaling $1.3 billion in companies including Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Magellan, Ensign Energy Services Inc. and Imperial Metals Corp., according to data published by Bloomberg. He’s additionally a part owner and chairman of the National Hockey League’s Calgary Flames and owns several ski resorts via a company called Resorts of the Canadian Rockies.

I think we’ve shot inside us the foot if you take away the Alberta advantage.

Edwards is renowned for playing an energetic role in his investments and also the world of business, and for his concentrate on keeping costs at his companies low and doing deals. He is the executive chairman of Canadian Natural, an operator in the oil sands and frequent consolidator in the nation’s energy industry that represents his largest investment by value. In NHL labor talks this year in New York that resulted in a player lockout, Edwards was among owners at the table.

The investor’s clout in shaping policy has been evident both at the national and provincial levels, including in his role as a director of two business-focused research and advocacy groups, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and C.D. Howe Institute.

Edwards was also among a little group of oil executives to publicly offer the Alberta government’s new climate policy introduced last November, with a rising carbon tax and emissions limits for industry, appearing on stage to talk after Premier Rachel Notley. The insurance policy was seen as an compromise between energy executives and environmentalists who have long lobbied against developments in the oil sands and proposed pipelines. Edwards said hello would replace the adversarial discussion of the past with a better one.

Bloomberg News