Chairman David Thomson named Canada's richest billionaire

Thomson, who turned 53 on Saturday, ranks 20th overall on Forbes’ annual list of billionaires, edging out Michael Bloomberg, founder of the eponymous financial news service and mayor of New York.

“Thomson avoids the spotlight despite his substantial media holdings (which includes Reuters, acquired in 2008, national newspaper of record The Toronto Globe and Mail, and Canada’s CTV television network) and his gaudy title (3rd Baron Thomson of Fleet),” the website MarketWatch reported.

According to a plan devised decades ago by Thomson Corporation founder Roy Thomson, control of the family fortune passed to David Thomson when his father Kenneth died in June 2006. David Thomson became the 3rd Baron Thomson of Fleet, a British peerage, on his 49th birthday. 

"David, my grandson, will have to take his part in the running of the organisation and David's son, too," Roy Thomson wrote in his 1975 autobiography. "With the fortune that we will leave to them go also responsibilities. These Thomson boys that come after Ken are not going to be able, even if they want to, to shrug off these responsibilities."

The Thomson family is the richest in Canada and 20th richest in the world according to Forbes. David Thomson’s son from his first marriage is the designated heir to the family business empire. ■