Circus impresarios have a reputation as hucksters who could talk the hind legs off a donkey and turn the resulting biped into a paying attraction. “Every crowd has a silver lining,” the 19th-century showman PT Barnum once said.
His modern-day heir is Guy Laliberté, leader of Cirque du Soleil, the fantastically successful contemporary circus franchise. Not even the great Barnum could match Mr Laliberté’s capacity for making money. A former busker, he became one of Canada’s richest men and the world’s first billionaire fire-breather and stilt-walker. His employees call him the “roi soleil”.
Now the sun king is richer still, following last week’ssale of his majority stake in the company to US, Chinese and Canadian investors in a deal that values it at $1.5bn. Mr Laliberté is now at liberty to pursue his interests in high-stakes poker, space travel and philanthropy. But will Cirque’s new owners come to be haunted by another saying associated with Barnum: “There’s a sucker born every minute”?