An heir to the McCain Foods fortune is turning to the courts to force the family business to buy her out at fair market value, after alleging the company’s board sabotaged an attempt to sell her shares to an outside investor.
Eleanor McCain, the daughter of the late Wallace McCain – one of the two co-founders of the famed New Brunswick-grown McCain Foods empire – has filed a claim in the New Brunswick Court of King’s Bench detailing a year-long fight to exit the company.
It amounts to a public rekindling of a long-standing McCain family feud over the company’s control.
McCain Foods is denying the allegations.
“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 Boyd Erman, a spokesperson from the Toronto-based public relations firm FGS Longview, who said he was responding on the company’s behalf.
“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.”
Both a lawyer and a public relations spokesperson for Eleanor McCain declined to comment further when reached by Brunswick News.
The court filings state Eleanor McCain holds a 8.72 per cent ownership in the company, shares she inherited from her father.
That’s potentially worth roughly $1 billion amid estimates that McCain Foods is worth at least $20 billion as a privately held company.
The remaining shares are held by other McCain family members.
Not a single share of the company has ever been held outside of the McCain family.
“Eleanor wishes to sell her shares and leave the family business,” read the court documents.
But she argues that’s being met with resistance.
“McCain Foods Group Inc. does not want family members to be able to break away, it works to tie the family to the business,” the documents continue.
“Due to MFGI’s conduct, Eleanor’s only recourse is to have (the company) buy back her shares, and MFGI is only prepared to purchase Eleanor’s shares at a discounted price that is hundreds of millions of dollars below (its) own internal estimates.”
The documents label the company’s actions as “oppressive.”
“Eleanor is trapped within McCain Foods Group Inc. and unable to fairly monetize her shares,” the court filing concludes.
The allegations have not been proven in court.
Eleanor seeks an order requiring McCain Foods to acquire all of her shares “at fair value or, alternatively, fair market value without discount.”
She currently lives in Toronto, according to her court filing.
She never worked for the family business.
After earning an undergraduate degree in music at New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University, Eleanor built a career performing as a singer.
She has an adult daughter.
In 1956, Florenceville, N.B. brothers Wallace and Harrison McCain founded McCain Foods to operate as a frozen french fry business.
It has since grown to become one of the largest food businesses globally, with one in four french fries in the world produced by the company and its subsidiaries, while selling in more than 160 countries and generating annual global revenues of more than $16 billion.
The court documents reveal that in April 2025 Eleanor advised the company of her intention to sell her shares, notifying its board that she had identified a single potential purchaser.
It alleges that the board responded in a manner “calculated to dissuade the prospective purchaser.”
“MFGI made it clear that the prospective purchaser would be entering into a hostile shareholder environment in order to chill the prospective purchaser’s interest,” it adds.
That eventually resulted in the prospective purchaser walking away, the documents allege.
They continue that an unnamed company director then warned that if Eleanor sold her shares to a third party, “her immediate family would be alienated from the McCain clan.”
The court documents also go on to summarize the “widely publicized dispute” between Wallace and Harrison over the family businesses governance and succession plan.
“The relationships between the Wallace and Harrison branches of the family broke down,” it states.
It led to a multiyear public fight that was ultimately decided in 1994 after 10 weeks of arbitration in a Fredericton courtroom.
Since 1995, McCain Foods has hired outside executives to run the company.
The company recruited in 2017 current chief executive officer Max Koeune from French food giant Danone SA.
Sales have more than doubled since.
As founders, Wallace and Harrison each held 33.33 per cent shares in the company, while two other brothers, Andrew and Robert, were passive investors and each held 16.67 per cent.
Over the decades, the four original McCain shareholders have passed on their respective ownership interests to their descendants.
Harrison McCain died in 2004, while Wallace died in 2011.
A second generation, which Eleanor is part of, includes 19 children.
A third generation currently has 36 members, with some of them now owners of shares.
A breakdown in court documents shows the Harrison branch of the family currently holds a 36.72 per cent ownership interest in the company, the largest percentage, while the Wallace branch holds 27.34 per cent, the Andrew branch 18.12 per cent, and Robert, 17.82 per cent.
The bulk of the court submission attempts to detail how the company’s board aims to keep it a family business through tax and governance policies.
The board of directors is comprised of seven members: The Wallace and Harrison branches each select two, the Andrew and Robert branches each select one, and one seat is filled by a non-family member.
“McCain Foods Group Inc. has adopted corporate policies and structures intended to restrict ownership of MFGI to only members of the McCain family,” the documents state, going as far as to say that it has “erased the distinction between the family and the business owned by the family.”
“The net result of McCain Foods Group Inc.’s actions is to make it practically impossible for any shareholder to sell their shares to a purchaser outside of the McCain family, effectively denying family members an exit.”
It later adds that “the policies and strategies McCain Foods Group Inc. has adopted to deter the sale of its shares outside of the McCain family have been successful.”
The court filing gives the company between 20 to 60 days to respond from a March 23 filing date.