Power Corporation of Canada has certainly grown in size and range far beyond what A.J. Nesbitt and P.A. Thomson conceived in 1925. Nesbitt, Thomson and Company had begun underwriting and investing in the construction and promotion of Canadian hydroelectric utilities almost immediately after its own founding in 1912.

Rejecting the offers of a reckless Chicago speculator who was buying up utility companies across the United States, A.J. Nesbitt and P.A. Thomson instead chose to defend and strengthen Canada’s power sector through consolidation. To that end, they established a public holding company – simply, but appropriately, named “Power Corporation of Canada” – that would profit from the growing demand for industrial and domestic electricity across the country, offer expert management advice to its operating affiliates, and provide technical services through a construction and engineering department that would eventually design and build many of Canada’s most innovative power developments.

Not only did Power Corporation bring the advantages of consolidation at the executive level, it further ensured that the destiny of these vital power companies would rest in Canadian hands. While common shares carried one vote each, ten votes were assigned to each participating preferred share, the majority of which were held by the two founders, giving them control of the company. A.J. Nesbitt became the first President, but he left much of the day-to-day management to his Vice-President, James B. Woodyatt, an electrical engineer and power company executive who ultimately was to serve as Chairman of the Board from 1956 until his retirement in 1962.

Power Corporation’s first five years were marked by impressive growth. While Ottawa- Montreal Power was sold in 1927, Ottawa and Hull Power in 1928, and Dominion Power and Transmission in 1930, Power Corporation acquired from British investors a major stake in British Columbia Power, then one of Canada’s largest and most prosperous hydroelectric producers, serving the Vancouver-Victoria region, at the same time as it invested in Northern British Columbia Power. As well, it set up an industrial department to encourage new industries to locate near its power companies; it opened stores to sell electrical merchandise as a way of promoting mass consumption; and it put together a large and diverse investment portfolio of stocks and bonds, with positions in more than two dozen public utilities ranging from New York to Tokyo to Brazil. The most significant of these was Foreign Power Securities Corporation, incorporated in 1927, itself a holding company with large electric and gas interests throughout France.

By the year ended June 1930, Power Corporation’s affiliated companies were operating 40 power plants across Canada, which represented more than $250 million in plant and property investment and served over 1.5 million Canadians. Power’s annual net earnings had soared above $5 million. Its market capitalization, the number of its shareholders, and the value of its stock and bond holdings had also risen sharply, while its own common shares, issued at $5.00 a share in 1925, climbed to a high of $139.75 in 1929.

Within a very short time A.J. Nesbitt and P.A. Thomson had built one of the most successful enterprises in Canadian business, and proven themselves creative entrepreneurs as well as astute financiers