BCBUSINESS.CA FEBRUARY 2017 BCBUSINESS 43
to assemble companies from scratch. "I
am a builder," he asserts as the brass band
kicks into gear down below. "I come up
with a plan and a goal. I hire talent and
assemble a team, and I raise capital."
S
idoo also works his tail o, just like
he did when he left pro football
for the brokerage business. In his
nal
CFL season in 1988, with the
BC Lions, he spent his mornings
at a downtown Vancouver -irm
working the phones, then raced to foot-
ball practice. After dinner he'd go back to
making cold calls, building his client base.
"I did that for three months," remembers
Sidoo, the rst Indo-Canadian to play in
the league. "It was crazy."
Sidoo became a top earner and made
partner at Yorkton Securities, but after a
decade he moved into investment bank-
ing, founding several companies in the
resource sector. Not all succeeded, but
Sidoo struck it rich with American Oil &
Gas Inc. In 2010, U.S. petroleum player
Hess Corp. bought the business for
US$630 million in an all-stock deal.
Football is just one of many passions
that Sidoo has thrown his time and
money behind. One venture that didn't
pan out was his 2006 decision to buy a
stake in Lumière, then one of Vancouver's
top-ranked restaurants. Lumière's high-
prole chef, Rob Feenie, had reached out
to Sidoo because he was $350,000 in the
red. But the relationship soured as Feenie
publicly accused Sidoo and his wife,
Manjy, of seizing control of the kitchen to
force him out. Sidoo maintained that they
didn't have anything to do with the food.
After Feenie departed, Sidoo imported an
even more illustrious chef, Daniel Boulud,
from New York. But Lumière had already
lost some of its well-heeled clientele and
never regained its original cachet. The
restaurant closed in 2011.
More recently, Sidoo has become
known for his philanthropy. In 2006, he
and Manjy launched Sidoo Family Giv-
ing, a charity whose causes include sup-
portive housing for the homeless, school
breakfast and arts programs, children's
football camps and research into child-
hood cancers. Their sons, Dylan and Jor-
dan, are involved too. The Sidoo Family
Athletics Endowment, which dispenses
aid to student athletes, is the largest of its
kind at
UBC, where Sidoo serves on the
board of governors.
Giving children a decent breakfast
before school strikes a personal chord
for Sidoo. His father, an immigrant mill-
worker from the Punjab, raised ve kids
on a salary of $12,000. "I know that growl-
ing feeling in your stomach," he says.
"I grew up poor in New Westminster,
and there were many days when I only
had one meal."
The experience marked him. "Why do
I continue working as hard as I do?" Sidoo
asks. "Because I don't want to end up back
in that little house in New Westminster."
ON HIS GAME: (Clockwise from top left) Sidoo
throwing the ball at UBC; at Down Set Hut kids'
football camp; with his family and actor Kevin
Spacey; as a Saskatchewan Roughrider with his
wife, Manjy; playing for the BC Lions; (far left) as a
UBC Thunderbird in the early 1980s
