Canadian billionaire Bernard “Barry” Sherman and his wife, Honey, were found dead in their Toronto home Friday, and police are reportedly investigating their deaths as suspicious.
A spokesperson for Apotex, the generic drug giant Sherman started, confirmed the couple’s deaths Friday. ”All of us at Apotex are deeply shocked and saddened by this news and our thoughts and prayers are with the family at this time,” a spokesperson for the company stated in an email.
Police were called to the Shermans’ home in Toronto just before noon on Friday after two bodies — which turned out to be Sherman and his wife — were found in the basement, The Globe and Mail newspaper reported.
Sherman was age 75. He and his wife are survived by their 4 children.
In 1974, armed with a doctorate in rocket science from MIT, Sherman used his mother’s life savings to buy his uncle’s drug company, which ultimately became Apotex. Starting with two employees, he expanded the company to a workforce of over 10,000. Sherman stepped down as CEO in 2014 but stayed on as chairman. At the time of his death he had an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion, and was the 12th richest person in Canada. He has appeared on the Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires for more than 15 years.
For years, though, Sherman had been plagued by an ongoing family drama. In 2007, three of his cousins and the widow of a fourth filed a lawsuit against Sherman stating that he owed them $1 billion in damages and a 20% stake in Apotex. The reason? The cousins are the children of the late Louis Winter, who founded Empire Laboratories, the business Sherman acquired in 1967 after Winter’s death. They claimed that they should have been paid royalties on four products over a 15-year period, and that they should have had the right to obtain employment through the company at 21 years old and a 5% stake in the company at 23 years old. The original suit was dismissed in 2015 by the court registrar, but was reinstated in 2016. In September an Ontario judge ruled in favor of Sherman, and the cousins appealed the decision.
Apotex now sells over 260 generic drugs in more than 115 countries. Its medicines are used to fill over 89 million prescriptions a year in Canada alone, and annual global revenues are $1.5 billion. Apotex has said it plans to spend $2 billion over the next decade to research new drugs. The company also makes non-prescription drugs, disposable plastics and fine chemicals for medical use.
Source: Forbes
