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A man passes by a Couche Tard convenience store in Montreal, Friday, October 5, 2012.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press

The future of Canada's biggest convenience store chain remains clouded after its chairman expressed doubts that he and the company's three other founders will be able to maintain control of the retailer as the clock starts ticking on the expiry of their special stock rights.

"There aren't a lot of solutions here" to maintain the founders' ownership, Alain Bouchard told The Globe and Mail in a brief exchange after the Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc.'s annual shareholders meeting Tuesday. "We've tried. I'm not optimistic."

The comments came as Couche-Tard management provided more details about the company's desire to sell marijuana and the impact of this month's hurricanes in the southern United States. Executives also talked about their business in Norway, which is being used as a laboratory to test the risk and potential return of an electric car charging system in other parts of the world.

Mr. Bouchard and three other friends – co-founders Richard Fortin, Réal Plourde and Jacques D'Amours – control Couche-Tard through a special class of multiple voting shares that carry 10 votes each, despite owning about 23 per cent of the equity as of mid-2016. Under a sunset clause hatched in 1995 when the founders were in their 30s and 40s and Couche-Tard was not the retailing powerhouse it is today, those special voting rights were set to expire in 2021.

That's when the youngest of the founders, Mr. D'Amours, will turn 65. The other founders have already passed that mark.

Mr. Bouchard never dreamed that investors would reject a proposal he made last year to extend the founders' control of the company past that date. When they did, he was stunned and hurt, blaming "investors in Toronto" for blocking the plan. Carried by emotion at the time, he even suggested he might sell the multinational, provoking a wave of anxiety among Quebec's business and political class.

Fidelity Investments, a major Couche-Tard shareholder, was among those opposed to the scheme, sources have confirmed. The mutual fund giant is believed to have the utmost faith in Mr. Bouchard and recognizes the substantial returns generated by him and the other founders over the years. But it is uneasy about the prospect of their children inheriting the founders' controlling position in the company, the sources said.

The situation remains unresolved. Shareholder rights group Médac calculated it would cost the founders $7.5-billion to repurchase enough shares to regain control of the company in the event their stock loses its supervoting power.

"They've been fantastic owners, great managers of the business, entrepreneurs and great mentors to me. So I would love to see them continue," Brian Hannasch, Couche-Tard chief executive officer, said in an interview Tuesday. "But the management team's focus is on shareholders. And that's all shareholders."

While the sunset clause expiry looms closer with each passing day, Mr. Hannasch is busy growing the empire through acquisitions and increased merchandise sales. Couche-Tard has added 2,293 stores in the past 24 months alone through acquisitions, including the $3.8-billion (U.S.) purchase of CST Brands Inc.

The Laval, Que.-based company is now focused on digesting that acquisition before buying again. Future expansion could come in Mexico, Asia or Europe, Couche-Tard executives have said. The chain reported earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $2.4-billion (U.S.) last year over a network of 15,000 stores worldwide.

Couche-Tard was directly affected by the hurricanes that swept through the U.S. south. More than 1,000 employees of the company lost their homes or were forced to abandon them, Mr. Hannasch said, and roughly 30 stores remain closed in Texas and Florida as repairs continue. He said it's too soon to evaluate the financial impact of the storms, adding it's likely not material. There was panic buying of gasoline and other items before the storms hit in addition to lost sales, he said.

Closer to home, one revenue opportunity might be marijuana. The company wants to sell cannabis in its stores and has hired a lobbyist in Quebec to make sure it is not shut out of any distribution system the province eventually sets up. Following the introduction of federal legislation proposing to legalize recreational use of the drug this past spring, Ontario said earlier this month it would launch a monopoly of cannabis stores as a subsidiary of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. It's not clear what system other provinces will adopt.

"We view ourselves as serving the communities very well and we have a lot of skills at selling age-restricted products" like beer and tobacco, Mr. Hannasch said, adding that company officials are talking to politicians but haven't taken the matter further.

"To the extent society needs us to provide that service, we think we'd be willing to do it – with the right regulations in place, with the right expectations. We don't see it being something that's for every site. Nor would it possibly be under our banner. But again, we think we bring a very efficient operation to the equation. And we think we bring the skills to service customers in a very responsible way."

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