EP 211: Why Cannabis Is Just a Side Project for the World's Biggest Companies

In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, host Raymond Guns sits down with Nick Kenny, Founder of KBS Strategic Advisory, to pull back the curtain on how the world's largest, most established companies have been quietly studying — and entering — cannabis for nearly a decade.Nick spent 18 months inside Imperial Brands educating a FTSE-listed boardroom on cannabis before anyone could say the word publicly. That work led to real investments, a career pivot, and eventually to KBS — a consultancy built around one idea: helping highly regulated, mature industries navigate entry into highly regulated, immature ones.Nick opens up about:🚬 The question that started everything: In 2015, the president of Imperial Brands walked into Nick's North Carolina office and asked what he knew about cannabis. Nick's first instinct was to check for hidden cameras. What followed was 18 months of global research, boardroom education, and a career-defining move.🌍 Winning the stigma battle before the business case: The biggest obstacle wasn't regulations or financials. It was that every executive in the room had a personal history with the plant. Nick's solution: fly senior leaders to Colorado and Vegas to walk into legal dispensaries themselves. Seeing a branded, ID-checked retail environment next to a bakery changed the conversation entirely.🏢 What pubcos actually want from cannabis: Large companies avoid cultivation — they don't want to own grows. What they want is end product: brands, IP, velocity, and distribution leverage. And their first play is almost always the same.⚖️ The Proceeds of Crime Act problem: In the UK, even exploring cannabis investment had legal landmines. Nick mapped red/amber/green pathways just to figure out which routes wouldn't expose Imperial to criminal liability under POCA.💰 Cannabis is a side project — and that's the point: For a multinational, the cannabis team might be one person with five minutes of board time to get a project approved. These companies are not in a hurry. They're investing early and waiting for regulatory stability before they deploy serious capital.🔄 A three-prong framework for navigating regulatory shifts: Nick was one week from manufacturing a hemp-derived THC beverage when the rules changed. His framework for deciding how to respond: map your least-risk pathway, set conditions for waiting it out, and define what "go all in" actually looks like. Then pick the one you can live with.📈 The tobacco market share lesson cannabis hasn't fully absorbed: Tobacco's survival playbook runs on a constraint cannabis hasn't fully accepted yet — you can't grow the total market. What you can do is take share. If your business depends on the regulatory environment improving to be viable, that's worth a hard look.Nick has spent a decade on the inside of how established money evaluates this industry. The perspective here doesn't come from pitch decks. It comes from boardrooms. If you've been wondering what the multinationals are actually thinking about cannabis — and what that means for operators building businesses today — this episode maps it out clearly.Subscribe for deep dives on cannabis business, accounting, regs, and growth! 🔥👉 Connect with Nick Kenny: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasjkenny/