Canada's new national lottery, Lotto Max, launches ticket sales next Saturday

As new contest launches nationwide next week, a look at some pitfalls of having winning ticket

September 13, 2009

Nancy J. White

The winner's curse looms large in lottery lore.

There's Buddy Post, a former circus cook who won $16.2 million in a 1988 Pennsylvania lottery. Six years later, he was bankrupt, divorced and the subject of a bungled murder plot – his brother had hired a hit man to kill him.

Ontario's Ibi Roncaioli claimed a $5 million lottery prize in 1991. Last year, her husband was convicted in her 2003 poisoning death.

Jack Whittaker from West Virginia scored $315 million in a Powerball jackpot in 2002. In addition to numerous legal run-ins, he suffered terrible personal loss: his beloved only granddaughter, with whom he shared the fortune, turned drug addict and was found dead. "I wish," Whittaker told ABC News, "I'd torn that ticket up."

Ah, the perils of sudden wealth. As Canada's new national lottery, Lotto Max, launches ticket sales next Saturday with a first draw on Sept. 25, there will be big jackpots and more million-dollar prizes, more happy dance delirium and more down-the-road pitfalls.

"None of us appreciate the difficulties and challenges," says financial planner Susan Bradley, founder of the Florida-based Sudden Money Institute. A lottery win, "ends the way life is for you."

Boo-hoo. A financially-flush new life sure sounds appealing: Caribbean getaways, a Paris pied-à-terre, a spanking new medical wing in your very own name. The downside? An identity crisis, increased wariness, strained relationships and a flood of strangers' sob stories.

"We should all have their problems," laughs H. Roy Kaplan, a sociologist at the University of South Florida, who has written about lottery winners.

Over the years, he has met about 500 of them, the prudent and the impulsive. While American winners tend to buy showy mansions, Canadians, he found, renovate.

"Although there may be tough times," says Kaplan, "by and large people's lives are enhanced by winning."

That was Jan's experience. The office worker, who asked that her last name not be used, is one of Bray Motors' 25 employees – the entire full-time staff – who shared $22.5 million last summer. A sweet $900,000 each.

She bought a new Chevrolet Equinox, renovated the house and put away a nest egg. Some of the older employees retired from the GM dealership in Sundridge, but others are still on the job.

"Life is just a little easier," she says. "I think we all benefited because it wasn't enough money to go wild and crazy. No one did."

So how much do you need to go wild and crazy?

One person's chump change is another's pot of gold. Bradley, whose clients include professional athletes and heirs, as well as the lottery lucky, has witnessed people spin out of control after a prize of a few hundred thousand.

One woman, a city worker in her early 30s, won $250,000 in a settlement and started buying houses and cars. Says Bradley: "She told me, `People like me need a Lexus.' She got herself into financial trouble that will take the rest of her working career to get out of."

Instant millionaires can easily slide into ruin, she says. "There's a stress response with winning. The fight or flight part of your brain starts operating. The person's ability to see the big picture is diminished."

Personality quirks come into play. The party person lives large until the money runs out. A shy, inhibited person may withdraw further, suspicious of people's motives.

Bad feelings are not uncommon. Few winners are prepared for all the expectations of largesse, says Kaplan.

Raymond Sobeski, of Princeton, Ont., had an inkling of this in 2003. He waited almost a year to claim his $30 million during which time he divorced his wife. His ex then launched a lawsuit for her share that turned into an ugly legal battle. They did reach a support settlement in 2005.

Winning is an isolating experience, explains Bradley. "You're suddenly different than your peers."

So if you win the lottery, what should you do?

Nothing precipitous, say the experts. Forget the one-way ticket to the Riviera. Get a good financial planner and stay calm.

"I've met people who complained that winning was full of headaches," says Kaplan. "But nobody ever told me they were giving it back."

Barrick, Fairfax Push Canadian Stock Sales to Decade High

By Doug Alexander

Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Stocks sales in Canada surged to the highest in a decade this year after Barrick Gold Corp. and Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. led the biggest one-day sale of equity in Canadian history.

Barrick, the world’s largest gold producer, raised $3.5 billion selling common shares to unwind gold-price hedging contracts. Fairfax, the Canadian insurer, sold $1 billion in shares on Sept. 8 to finance an acquisition.

“It’s a very strong sign for the economy,” said Roman Dubczak, vice chairman and head of equity capital markets at CIBC World Markets, which led the Fairfax sale. “It’s quite positive for the economic environment if corporations are able to finance quite readily in equity and fixed-income markets.”

The stock sales this week add to $25.1 billion in new Canadian equity financings between January and August, on track for the highest nine-month total since at least 1999, when Bloomberg began collecting data. Canadian stock sales rose in the first half of the year as Royal Bank of Canada and other lenders sold more preferred shares.

“The rebound in the market is suggesting, rightly or wrongly, that there is a recovery coming,” said Paul Hand, managing director of equity capital markets at Royal Bank’s investment banking unit in Toronto.

A rally in Canadian stock prices is driving companies to sell common shares as well. The benchmark Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index has risen 45 percent since its March 9 low, led by financial stocks. The S&P 500 jumped 53 percent since then.

New Issues

“Investors are putting a lot of their money back into equity markets and enjoying new issues,” CIBC’s Dubczak said. “A year ago the markets were quite shut down from an equity perspective, so there’s a catch-up as well.”

Canadian equity offerings fell 6.6 percent to $32.2 billion in 2008 from the previous year, as initial stock sales plunged 81 percent, according to Bloomberg data. The value of IPOs this year has already doubled, led by a C$500 million ($463 million) spinoff of an energy unit by Epcor Utilities Inc. of Edmonton, Alberta.

“Investors are evaluating opportunities to reposition portfolios and deploy cash, which has led to significant investor demand in North America and overseas,” said Kirby Gavelin, co-head of equity capital markets at RBC Capital Markets, which led the Barrick sale.

Paladin Energy Ltd., the Toronto-listed uranium producer, said Sept. 8 it would sell shares worth as much as 15 percent of its capital. Brookfield Properties Corp., owner of New York’s World Financial Center, raised $1.04 billion last month to refinance debt and make investments.

Osisko Mining

Other firms that sold shares this month included Osisko Mining Corp., which raised C$149.5 million. Silver Wheaton Corp. may offer as much as $287.5 million of stock to buy silver assets from Barrick. WestJet Airlines Ltd., the country’s second-biggest carrier, said yesterday it plans to raise as much as C$172.5 million.

Barrick’s stock sale may rise to $4 billion if the banks leading the sale unload additional shares to meet demand. The Barrick offering topped the C$3.19 billion sale of the federal government’s stake in Petro-Canada in September 2004, previously the largest in Canadian history. Barrick had originally planned to sell $3 billion in stock, and increased the sale to $3.5 billion yesterday.

Barrick’s sale “makes a lot of sense” to help them reduce hedging contracts, said Gijsbert Groenewegen, a partner at Gold Arrow Capital Management in New York, which owns the stock. “The fact that they increased it by another half a billion was an indication for the appetite in the market.”

A bank group led by RBC Capital Markets, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Securities and Scotia Capital will share $122.5 million from arranging the Barrick sale, based on a 3.5 percent fee, according to sale documents.