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REGIONAL WRAP-UP are really serial entrepreneurs who've been prepared to take risks to develop the oil and gas business," he says. "In effect, people don't expect when they start a business that in fact they're going to necessarily stay with it for life even if it is a very successful business," he says. "What happens with these entrepreneurs: as they have grown companies, they develop con- fidence in certain advisers, and those advisers sort of move along with the business. A lot of lawyers in this community have done very well by that." Andrew Grasby, also at McCarthys, says he has one client who has started five companies in 15 years and is preparing for another launch. "Entrepreneurs are just finding different ways to do things," he says. John Brussa, a partner at Burnet Duckworth & Palmer John Brussa LLP, was responsible for creating the first income trust in 1986, when he and an accountant won a groundbreaking tax ruling that enabled a small Calgary trust to buy oil and gas assets to achieve cost savings. "The M&A environment in oil and gas has long operated on a pyramid principle," he says. "You had a large number of smaller players at the bottom of the pyramid and some of those players would get bigger and gobble up their competitors until, at the very pinnacle," they'd sell to the income trusts. It was lucrative. Businesses gleaned mutual benefits. Brussa says trusts accounted for $100 billion in capitaliza- tion in 2006. "So you had to have a lot of these folks who'd followed this strategy having to re-evaluate, and what you have is a number of mergers of junior companies to acquire some size and allow them to take on the next level of growth." As chair of Penn West Energy Trust, Brussa earlier this year helped facilitate its acquisition of Canetic Resources Trust for $3.6 billion, along with Vault Energy Trust for $159 mil- lion, to form Canada's largest energy trust. "It's symbolic of what's happening now," he says. Brussa remarks on the unique nature of the Alberta business environment. "There are probably a thou- sand companies, at least, that produce 500 barrels a day, and there are probably 10 companies that produce over 200,000 barrels a day," he points out. "So it is quite different. I don't know if you'd see that in any other industry. It would be sort of like, okay, you have four large automakers and a thousand companies producing a few cars a year. It's an environment that's got its own rhythm." — DARYL-LYNN CARLSON I'VE GOT 10 BUCKS BURNING A HOLE IN MY POCKET. I'M GONNA . . . SQUEEZE OUT 8.33 LITRES OF GAS - ROAD TRIP! HOW DID I GET THIS EXTRA $10, YOU ASK. BY SUBSCRIBING TO THE DIGITAL EDITION OF CANADIAN LAWYER 1 Year Print & Digital 1 Year Digital Only 2 Year Print & Digital 2 Year Digital Only $65.00 + gst $55.00 + gst $105.00 + gst $95.00 + gst Special rates for students and international subscribers. To order: call 1-888-743-3551 or go online at www.canadianlawyermag.com GET ME A JUICY RIB EYE STEAK FOR THE BBQ HEAD TO THE TRACK AND BET ON THE PONIES 8 M AY 2008 www. C ANADIAN SubAd_10bucks.indd 1 mag.com 4/14/08 3:54:39 PM