n-tres-ted

That is an interesting prospect, partly because I've owned a significant holding in FFH for a number of years, which has been profitable. On the other hand, I've also owned a substantial position in OSTK since about the same time, and that holding is down 65%. Both companies experienced criminal manipulative attacks against their share price and fought back. OSTK has fought even more fiercely, but the predators have been relentless, continuing to suppress the share price even in the face of tightening litigation exposure. PB has been sensitive to protecting shareholder interests against any stock buyback or sellout at suppressed share prices. No doubt he fully understands that OSTK is worth much more than the current share price indicates. A fair price might be negotiated with FFH, but I don't know whether PB would want to sell the litigation rights or whether FFH would want to buy them. That aspect is problematic, because if the company is separated from the litigation rights, then funding the litigation would become an issue and the defendants would likely dig in even deeper. JMO

http://www.deepcapture.com/the-miscreants-global-bust-out-chapter-16-the-deep-capture-of-america-and-some-clues-as-to-the-once-and-future-cataclysm/ Mark Mitchell recalls that Fairfax was targeted by a Milken-related ring of hedge funds, as follows: [Excerpt] As has been well documented by Deep Capture, hedge funds in the Milken network have refined many of these tactics to an art form. I encourage readers to review our archives, but I will mention briefly that by 2006 it had been well-documented that Milken network hedge funds conspired to take down Fairfax Financial, one of the largest financial services companies in Canada. Among the hedge funds that participated in that scheme were Steve Cohen’s SAC Captial and Exis Capital, which is essentially a subsidiary of SAC Capital (“the most powerful hedge fund on the Street”). I have mentioned that Steve Cohen was once investigated for trading on inside information provided to him by Milken’s shop at Drexel. I have also mentioned that Cohen used to help run the Milken-financed Mafia brokerage Gruntal & Co, where one of his trading partners was Felix Sater, the Russian Mafia boss with ties to the Russian intelligence services (and who told the U.S. government that his ties to Al Qaeda could be useful to the CIA, part of his successful effort to stay out of prison). Felix now runs Bayrock, a real estate outfit that provides money laundering services to Steve Cohen. Bayrock has several partnerships. One is with Leon Black’s Apollo Management (which employs Milken’s son, Lance). Another is with Tamir Sapir, a Russian Mafia boss who used to provide high-tech equipment to KGB operatives in New York in partnership with Semion Kislin, uncle of the above-mentioned Arik Kislin, tied to Russian and Iranian intelligence assets. Exis Capital is run by Adam Sender. Recall that the FBI recorded Sender having a conversation with a former Genovese Mafia soldier who offered to make one of Sender’s enemies disappear in the Nevada desert. In 2006, while that Genovese soldier was on trial for numerous crimes including a number of murder-for-hire plots, Sender’s Exis Capital deputy Andy Heller was writing an email about Fairfax Financial. In this email (which Deep Capture has obtained), Heller wrote that “the way to get this thing [Fairfax] down is to get them where they eat, like the credit analysts and holders. We’re taking this baby down for the count.” That is, the hedge funds were scheming to cut off Fairfax’s access to credit as part of its larger effort to take Fairfax “down for the count.” The recipient of this email was Jonathan Kalikow, of Stanfield Capital. Kalikow is the son of Peter Kalikow, who once the owned the New York Post. While Kalikow was in charge, the New York Post’s fleet of delivery trucks was handed over to La Cosa Nostra, which used the trucks to transport drugs and weaponry. Meanwhile, Post executives conspired with the Mob to inflate the paper’s circulation numbers. Kalikow was also among the largest backers of the arbitrage fund run by Milken’s famous criminal co-conspirator Ivan Boesky. At the time, Boesky was doing business with the Iranian regime and working out of a New York building (650 Fifth Avenue) owned by the Alavi Foundation, the Iranian government outfit later indicted along with its subsidiary, the Assa Corporation, for espionage and funding Iran’s nuclear program. The other largest investors in Boesky’s fund were: Marc Rich (indicted for trading with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis); Alan Patricof (closest U.S. associate of the Iranian Hassan Namazee, caught with $250 million worth of fake Treasuries); Michael Steinhardt (son of the biggest Mafia fence in America, once implicated by the government in a scheme to corner the U.S. Treasuries market); Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villechuchet (major feeder to the Madoff fraud, co-founder of Leon Black’s Apollo Management, found dead in December 2008, his blood neatly drained into a garbage can); and Jeffrey Picower (personally pocketed more than $5 billion from the Bernie Madoff criminal operation; found dead in October 2009, floating at the bottom of his swimming pool at his Palm Beach estate). Sources tell me that Villehuchet and Leon Black played instrumental roles in developing relationships between investment bank Credit Suisse (whose most important client is Leon Black) and the regimes in Iran, Sudan, and Libya. This is how it came to be that in 2009 Credit Suisse was fined $536 million for, among other things, transferring more than $1 billion directly to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and the Aerospace Industries Organization, the entities responsible for Iran’s covert production of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Credit Suisse, recall, also secretly transacted large volumes of illegal (and almost certainly manipulative) trading for Libya and Sudan. And a former official with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office is now investigating whether Credit Suisse did the same for the Assa Corporation, which provided Ivan Boesky and Marc Rich with office space and was later indicted for espionage and funding Iran’s nuclear program. Jonathan Kalikow’s Stanfield Capital was among the bigger players in the world of self-destruct CDOs. Another perpetrator of the self-destruct CDO scam, we know, was Tricadia, run with help from Stuart Boesky, a relative (probably the brother, certainly a close look-alike) of Ivan Boesky. As the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission made clear in its 2011 report to Congress, there weren’t many perpetrators of the self-destruct CDO scam, but this scam was almost wholly to blame for the mortgage crisis that began in 2007. As we will see in a later chapter, nearly every one of the other perpetrators of this scam were part of this same tight-knight network. ***

Why the big sell-off today in FFH's share price?

Sanjeev, I thank you for sharing this information of the illness and passing of such a good and vital person. I'm sure the people of Fairfax must feel the loss very deeply, too. The quality of character of the person in such a position of trust as she held says a great deal about management and personnel up and down the operation. Best to you,