Three days after Beverly's death, Sherman made a bid for the company and gave estate executors, the Royal Trust, just 24-hours to decide. The Trust declined.
A couple of years later Sherman and his then business partner, former high school friend, Joel Ulster, made another run for Empire.
This time he was successful - in large part because
trustees were swayed by an option written into the purchase agreement that offered the four Winter orphans the opportunity to work for their father's company at the age of 21 and to acquire five percent of the company two years later should they want it.
But in 1972 Sherman sold Empire. Before he did so he had merged with a drugstore chain and relinquished 51 percent of the business.
In doing so he triggered an expiration clause in the option providing for the orphans, which was dependent him having control of the company.
Sherman maintained that the loss of control absolved him of any 'fiduciary duty' to them. He disappeared out of their lives and two years later parlayed the profits of Empire's sale into founding Apotex.
Today, Winter said, his older cousin 'never had any intention of honoring that option.'
Certainly he never told Martin and Carole Barkin, the couple who adopted the Winter orphans, that it existed.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5327391/Canadian-tycoon-killed-wife-says-cousin.html
