[7] In March 2000, Angus Reid, Canada's largest polling firm, was sold to IPSOS, a Paris-based market research company for $100 million.
[10] By 2002, more than 3,500 of the 11,000 jobs created, maintained or saved in the Crocus Fund investee companies were held by employee owners.
[11] One of the challenges the Crocus Fund faced as it matured were the amendments to the investment pacing requirements imposed by the Government of Manitoba.
This created a problem in that when redemptions started, the pacing requirements would ultimately have put the fund into a financial bind.
[13] Investigative reporter Dan Lett further noted that just weeks before the fund voluntarily ceased trading, the government was going to change the legislation to soften the pacing requirements.
"What is significant about this is that in the wake of the Crocus collapse, Premier Doer and [Finance Minister] Selinger have always proudly proclaimed they never changed the legislation.
Unless another local source of capital could be found, these companies would either stop growing or would need to seek funding from outside the province of Manitoba, increasing the risk of non-local control.
Superfund was to be a pool of hundreds of millions of dollars in new capital formed by contributions from the province's largest public sector pension plans and Crown corporation investment funds.
This was immediately followed by a restructuring proposal for an independent management company that would oversee the investment portfolio, hire all existing staff (except the current CEO) and earn money from commissions based a share of the increase in value of the assets of the fund.
The two main issues were help in getting additional insurance for the board of directors and amending the Crocus Act to ease pacing and cash reserve requirements.
"[15] The fund's former CEO, Sherman Kreiner, subsequently sued the Provincial Auditor General to attempt to compel it to change its investigative practices.
[16] The OAG claimed legislative immunity to legal action, but Kreiner won two court decisions upholding his right to sue.
However, prior to abandoning the lawsuit, Kreiner's lawyers submitted a list of changes they wanted to see in the Auditor General's investigative practices.
[16] In his assessment of the legal proceeding, Winnipeg Free Press investigative report Dan Lett concluded: History will show that Kreiner’s lawsuit was abandoned, and his allegations against [Auditor General] Singleton remain unproven.