Counsel Corporation has a long history of leadership and innovation.

• Grew Counsel Trust Company from $3.6 million in assets and $2.5 million of equity when acquired in 1979, to $1.9 billion of assets and $114 million of equity when it was sold in June 1990 for approximately 1.5X equity.
• Created DirecTrust in 1986, the first financial institution in Canada to offer 24/7 telephone banking services.
• Pioneered the mortgage-backed securities business in Canada through FirstLine Trust. When CMHC initiated its own MBS program in 1987, FirstLine became its largest issuer and maintained that position until Counsel sold it in May 1991. At the end of 1990, FirstLine had 30% of the Canadian MBS market and over $2 billion in assets under administration.
• Created the Counsel Trust Real Estate Fund, a pooled real estate mutual fund, in 1982. In 1994, the Fund was restructured as a REIT and listed for trading on The Toronto Stock Exchange. In 1995, Counsel terminated its asset management contract with the REIT (now named RioCan REIT) to enable it to be self-managing.
• Established the Guaranteed Real Estate Partnership to acquire income-producing commercial real estate that had a Canadian chartered bank guarantee both the principal at the end of the term and an annual liquidity option.
• Entered the health care business in 1983 with the acquisition of Diversicare Incorporated, a nursing home management and consulting company that owned and/or managed 18 nursing homes in Canada and Florida, comprising approximately 2,600 beds/units in total. Counsel expanded this business so that at the time of the sale of its long term care operations via an IPO in 1994, there were 71 facilities in the U.S. and Canada with over 8,100 beds/units.
• Built American HomePatient into one of the largest home health care providers in the U.S. by expanding it from 18 centres and $13 million in annual revenues in 1988 to over 300 centres and revenues of $400 million in 1998.
• Transformed Choice Drug Systems from an institutional pharmacy with annual revenues of $40 million in 1994 into PharMerica, Inc., a company with $1.1 billion in revenues in 1998.
• Acquired Stadtlander Drug Co., a specialty retail pharmacy business, and grew its revenues from $86 million in 1995 to $460 million in 1998, just prior to its sale.
• Integrated four bankrupt or nearly bankrupt communications companies to create Acceris Communications Inc., a provider of telecommunications services to residential, small and medium-sized business and large enterprise customers in the United States. The telecommunications assets were sold in 2005.

These successes are the result of the commitment and expertise of Counsel's directors, officers and employees.