McCain daughter says she’s ‘trapped’ in family company

An heiress to the multibillion-dollar McCain french fry empire says she is financially “trapped” by the family-owned company and its policies, which she claims prevent her from selling her ownership stake for a fair price.

Eleanor McCain, a professional singer and the daughter of McCain Foods co-founder Wallace McCain, says the family holding company, McCain Foods Group Inc., or MFGI, has thrown up obstacles to her desire to cash out.

“MFGI does not want family members to be able to break away,” says a statement of claim filed by her lawyers in Court of King’s Bench in Moncton.

“Eleanor is trapped within MFGI and unable to fairly monetize her shares.”

The claim says even the holding company itself has acknowledged its policies make her shares “highly illiquid” — in other words, difficult to convert into cash.

None of the allegations have been proven in court, and the company says they are without merit.

Eleaner McCain argues that her father Wallace and his brother Harrison, who founded the company in 1957, always intended to let shareholders sell their shares “as they saw fit,” including to non-family investors.

But in the wake of a bitter succession battle three decades ago, she claims, the board of the holding company adopted policies to restrict that possibility.

Wallace and Harrison, who ran the company together for decades, went to court in 1993 over whether Wallace’s son Michael should succeed them as the head of the business.

A judge recommended at the time that they issue public shares so that outside investors could provide a check on future family disputes.

Instead, the holding company opted “to more tightly bind family members to one another and to the company under the guise of maintaining ‘harmony,’” Eleanor’s court filing says.

She argues those policies lower the value of her shares, making it hard to sell them to anyone other than other members of the family — who benefit by being able to offer a discounted price to buy her out

McCain co-founder’s daughter says she’s ‘trapped’ by company

For example, she alleges the company has understated its dollar value for tax purposes, lowering the dividends paid to shareholders.

“MFGI has intentionally made its shares unattractive to any potential third-party investor,” she says in the court filing.

The holding company has filed a notice that it will defend itself but has not filed a statement laying out its side of the story.

“The claims made in the lawsuit are without merit, and McCain Foods Group Inc. will respond comprehensively in due course through the appropriate legal channels,” said spokesperson Andy Lloyd.

“In the meantime, we remain committed to a fair commercial process that balances the interests of all stakeholders and the long-term interests of the company. Our hope is that this matter can be resolved constructively.”

Eleanor McCain’s lawyers did not respond to an interview request. 

Her lawsuit asks the court to order McCain Foods Group to buy all her shares at a fair value, a potentially lucrative sale for Eleanor.

The statement of claim says she owns 8.72 per cent of the company and estimates McCain Foods’s annual global sales at $16 billion.

The company grew from its start in Florenceville, in the heart of New Brunswick’s potato belt, into a global food giant with operations on six continents.

McCain Foods estimates it produces one-quarter of all the frozen french fries in the world.

McCain Foods Ltd., which operates those worldwide operations, is owned by McCain Foods Group.

It is controlled by 19 second-generation family shareholders, including Eleanor, and 36 third-generation shareholders, the court filing says.

Another alleged mechanism to block share sales to outsiders is a two-tier board structure that creates “a structural roadblock” for potential non-family buyers to get the information they need from executives at the operating company.

That makes it “practically impossible for any shareholder to sell their shares to a purchaser outside of the McCain family, effectively denying family members an exit from MFGI.” 

The filing says that in April 2025, Eleanor McCain told the holding company’s board that she had a potential buyer for her shares, but the company refused to provide a full picture of its situation.

At the same time, the holding company made its own offer to buy the shares at a discount.

Even using what she considered a misleadingly low valuation of the company, Eleanor’s shares “were worth many hundreds of millions of dollars more” than what McCain Foods Group offered to pay, she claims.

The potential buyer eventually walked away from the deal, the filing says.