ABSTRACT
In 1999, MacMillan Bloedel (MB), a forest product giant based in British Columbia (BC), was acquired by Weyerhaeuser (Weyco), an even bigger forest product giant, headquartered in Tacoma, Washington State. Apparently, MB had simply been another corporate name lost to ‘globalization’. Tom Stephens, MB’s last chief executive officer (CEO), who recommended the Weyco acquisition, certainly reinforced this view by emphasizing a ‘global’ trend toward bigger forest companies that could achieve efficiencies simply not available to the ‘smaller’ MB. Coincidentally, the acquisition apparently revealed another well-established trend: the Americanization of the Canadian economy. Yet this simple globalization account has already been publicly abused. Thus Weyco apparently did not find sufficient efficiencies in the former MB operations and in 2005 it sold its interests to Brascan, a giant fund and asset manager (but not forest product manufacturer) headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. The growth of big land asset companies with extensive forestland in their portfolios is, by the way, a global trend.
