tyska

Your emotions and love for Prem must have clouded your judgment on this one, because you are clearly not thinking straight. Here's an scenario that exemplifies what is happening here: Say you and your man-crush Prem are partners in a business. Prem owns 60%, you own 40%. The business is currently at cyclical lows, but you both believe instrinsic value to be ~$1.30. In fact, an arms-length party offers you $1.30 for it, but Prem declines (however you are keen to sell). Instead, he decides to squeeze you out and pay you $0.10 for your minority stake, because he believes the business would be better under his care, and he is in control. Would you still be madly in love with him in this scenario? I believe most rational businessmen would be quite angry, justifiably so. Stick to the facts on this, not your emotions. He's clearly doing the opposite of his supposed "fair and friendly acquisition" mantra. It keeps being brought up they are just looking after their shareholders so what is wrong with that. Nothing, but lets not pretend they are different than say your average hedge fund. JetsFan pointed out exactly what is being done, I'm not sure it can be explained any other way as to what was done to the minority shareholders at FBK. So at least man up and admit FFH is acting no different than most other companies out there.

Seeing I may be one of those referred to as a pot or kettle :D, I'll clarify. It may be business, but they have tried to brand themselves as " fair and friendly". It may be as SD said, that they locked themselves up with someone whose future behaviour they didn't anticipate. But it is hard to imagine them being without influence. While I like the Fairfax team I don't love them, so find it hard not to see this tarnishing the brand they are trying to portray, as far as acquisitions.

Exactly, if this is allowed to be settled by an unsavory fight, the questions are going to hang onto FFH. Whether true or not. Sorry to say, but this has changed my perception of FFH, because something just doesn't seem right. And they are letting it go on, over what is an insignificant investment for them. So that sort of reinforces the perception that something else must be going on.

Isn't there a saying, when in a hole, stop digging. None of this seems very well thought out on ABHs behalf.

Thanks, I was wondering what the logic was behind extending the bid. I was thinking extending it 10 days isn't going to get more shareholders to subscribe at 1 dollar when it's trading at 1.30.

I guess I'm in the minority here, in that I hope the deal falls through. Hopefully the management has learned a little lesson and that would be good for shareholders going forward. There are a lot of things in motion that should move the value past the 1.20 range, that many want to dump it for, in a short time. Assuming the management doesn't do anything stupid after it falls through, of course.

That's funny, was it a Freudian slip? "But evil is in the details."

As someone who doesn't think out nearly as complex of scenarios as SD. And maybe that is the answer to my question. :) My question is why wouldn't Fairfax and their group go the route of putting in board members that will realize the value of the operation. It seems to be a pretty strong consensus, even amongst those that haven't tendered,that this management team isn't competent at realizing shareholder value.

New information http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Fibrek-oppose-AbitibiBowater-cnw-784331275.html?x=0 "Competition Bureau issued Supplementary Information Request to Abitibi making it highly unlikely that Abitibi will be able to proceed with its insider bid on January 20, 2012"

Around 68k.

You must be psychic ;). They also said I may address questions to Phoenix Advisory Partners, their Information agent.

Funny, I've contacted Fbk twice, about their seeming lack of any action. Yet have never been contacted about my shares.

A couple thing to remember is this is Quebec and 1. they have a different legal system and 2. this is Quebec ;). Fairfax has proven before their weakest link is in their P.R. dept. so a media war isn't going to look favourably on them.

That's pretty much along the line I posted when the bid came out.Nothing fair or friendly, any way you look at it. No matter what they have done in the past, they'll have to wear this one also.

Doesn't sound either fair or friendly to other shareholders on their part. They've held onto a lot of other stocks with less probabilities of pulling out of the slump. And like you said it's a drop in the bucket, so why bail now at a hugely discounted value, is there some dispute between them and management that we don't know about.

Well said Packer, but I haven't seen even the Tea Party talking about some of the root problems on "Wall Street". Admittedly I don't follow U.S. politics that close though. All they understand is the surface part that their retirement portfolios are shrinking. They aren't aware of all the options that are diluting their value or the lavish bonuses that are triggered by manipulation. Or how truly lax the oversight of the markets truly are or how things like HFT are adding nothing to the market other than volatility. They are just left with a sense that someone has stolen their money and they look to get it back from those who have money.

Another article that mentions how a Berkshire sub is doing, in a roundabout way. "Also, when I flew into the Netjets Center in San Francisco on the way back from Las Vegas, I had never seen it so crowded. I’m talking packed with Gulfstream V’s, not Cessna 152’s. " http://oilprice.com/Finance/Economy/The-Most-Bizarre-Recession-in-History.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+oilpricecom+%28Oil+Price.com+Daily+News+Update%29 Dan

Regarding the homesteaders: The start of the video shows that 100 years ago Americans ate half as much meat, less than half as much sugar, and less than half as much dairy. The study in the video that implicates casein in cancer growth did this: they exposed the rats to aflotoxin (a known carcinogen). Then they observed that feeding them a diet high in animal protein (casein) turned on the cancer growth, and then reducing animal protein in the diet turned the cancer off again. So yes, there are more environmental carcinogens that we are exposed to. That makes us susceptible to getting a cancer started -- the research cited in the video suggests that animal protein plays a part in whether or not the cancer actually develops. As for the heart disease: if you go back to the video by Prof Lustig (Sugar: The Bitter Truth), that video points out that the high fructose consumption gets your liver to put triglicerides into your blood, and that winds up pairing up with LDL to create vLDL (the bad kind that starts the plaque formations in your arteries). So the homesteaders and the people in Africa are not loading up on fructose, thus don't have the problem with triglycerides. Anyhow that's my take on what the videos are trying to present. It's all very interesting, if one only knew what was actual truth and what was spin. :) I'm sure that I read an article that something in soybean had been linked to cancer growth also. In that book I mentioned, he talks about how our ability to digest the protein in milk is linked to the pasteurization process that not only changes the protein structure but also kill the naturally occurring enzymes that break it down. He mentions a study with two groups of cats fed pasteurized and raw milk. He also links it to heart disease and such. As far as how much was eaten 100 yrs ago I guess it is all anecdotal as it never went through a supply chain, I guess sugar would have as it is processed. I'm going mostly off what my father talked about eating growing up (born 1915). Milk from twice a day milking, butter, eggs, bread baked almost daily with butter or lard on it. Bread pudding made with the old bread and milk and eggs, chicken cooked up on Sunday. I think the weight problem was solved from just getting sick of what you were eating. :) As far as African diets, a lot of people over there that would probably love to have the discussion of what to cut out of their diet.

You should read the book "The untold story on milk" by Ron Schmid, I think that is right, don't have the book in front of me. Any ways he has lots of comparisons of countries that were high users of milk and their bone and teeth structures. Also results of some studies that are interesting but I'm sure wouldn't be allowed by researchers today, I remember one involving cats. Either way you probably wouldn't look at the milk in the supermarket the same way after reading.

Now if we were using insiders pilfering shareholders in a company as a template for a company that is a fraud, we would have what, 2 or 3 companies listed that are legit. ;)

I thought china was sort of a dead business. I know we had to dispose of some estate china a few years ago and had a hard time as no one wanted the bother of the special care for them. Not dishwasher safe and all that. Is china the only product of this company.

Sadly the only thing I own that went up today. FFh sure took a drop for a bit there also.

"A potential 28% gain considering the current selling price of pulp which will undoubtedly bring capacity increase is not worth it vs what is available out there in the marketplace. " Maybe we just get conditioned waiting for insurance to harden so FFH can show it's true value. :D

The CDN dollar sliding back won't hurt them either.