Thomson owns 14% of Woodbridge, a closely held family investment firm. The Ontario, Canada-based company's assets include a two-thirds stake in Thomson Reuters, a provider of news and financial data. The publicly traded business is led by her brothers, David and Peter, and had revenue of $6.6 billion in 2022.
The majority of Thomson's fortune is derived from Woodbridge, an investment firm that manages the family fortune originated by Canadian media magnate Roy Thomson. After his death in 1976, Thomson's estate was divided between his three children. His son, Kenneth, inherited 42% and his two daughters, Audrey and Irma, received 33% and 23%, respectively, according to a person familiar with the family's assets who asked not to be identified because Woodbridge is closely held.
Each heir evenly split their share in Woodbridge among their children, the source said. David and his two siblings, Peter and Taylor, each received 14% of Woodbridge. Each of Audrey's three children, Linda Campbell, Susan Grange and Gaye Farncombe, received 11%. A cousin, Sherry Brydson, the only child of Irma, owns about 23%.
Taylor is calculated in this analysis to own 14% of Woodbridge's stake in Thomson Reuters and it's Cash & Other Assets.
Woodbridge owns about 69% of Thomson Reuters, according to the 2023 proxy filing.
Cash & Other Assets is based on Woodbridge asset values as disclosed in a 2007 investor presentation 2007 and adjusted to reflect dividends, insider transactions, taxes and market performance. The family has collected more than $3 billion in dividend income and share sales since then, based on an analysis of company filings and Bloomberg data.
Thomson, through spokesman for Thomson Reuters David Girardin, didn't respond to requests for comment.
Canada's richest family was set on its path to wealth in 1931, when Roy Thomson acquired a radio station in North Bay Ontario. Two years later he bought the Timmins Press, a newspaper in Ontario. Within five years, Thomson was Canada's leading newspaper owner. After expanding in the UK, he sold shares in a public offering in 1965, with his son Kenneth taking over the business in 1976.
One of Kenneth's three children, Taylor Thomson was raised in Toronto, later splitting time in London and the Los Angeles area, where she found modest success as an actress in the 1990s. Her roles included supporting parts in an episode of the television series Forever Knight and the short-lived TV drama Matrix, as well as in a video game, Privateer 2: The Darkening.
She met New York native Michael Kolesa at a Buddhist retreat in upstate New York in the late 1990s, according to a report by Maclean's magazine. The pair married and had a daughter, divorcing after about a year, according to the Canadian publication. Thomson won custody of the child and later returned to Toronto. According to court and published accounts, Thomson began collecting art in the 2000s. She outbid Ann Getty for a pair of Louis XV vases at her first auction, only to learn later that they were frauds. She lost a lawsuit over the purchase against auctioneer Christie's.
Thomson received attention when it was disclosed she had hired private investigator Anthony Pellicano and others to spy on Kolesa and Pamela Miller, a woman who served as a nanny for Thomson in Malibu, California, for about a year. Thomson has sued Miller five times for violation of a non-disclosure agreement.
Thomson lives in Toronto.