tyska
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Posts posted by tyska
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Frankly, I don't understand a lot of comments regarding FFH. Their loyalty lies with their own shareholders first.
You got it! Alot of people on here are double-dipping themselves by owning FBK and FFH, yet they chide Prem for protecting his shareholder's interests. Pot calling the kettle black, me thinks! ;D Cheers!
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.
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I would also like to know if Steelhead has bought any more shares on the open market the past few days. They are the proxy for other ABH alignees. 13M shares have traded since the MERC offer was announced ... So there are some votes there to be had. That said, buying at $1.30+ to then seek to tender to ABH at lower price would reinforce argument of backroom dealings.
Maybe it's just that I can't process FFH going down such rathole ... We have not seen precedent for such before have we? And Sanjeev, your argument about mgmt wanting to keep their paycheques is moot, because the board is making the call ... and more importantly essentially ALL non-lockup/Steelhead shareholders (48%) have said NO to current ABH offer.
Et tu, Brutus? (Note that I'm going to fast run out of high-school day Shakespeare quotes, so I'll shut up now.)
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.
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Can anyone come up with a scenario where the regulator might conclude that it is in the "public interest" to cease trade the Mercer offer?
Isn't there a saying, when in a hole, stop digging. None of this seems very well thought out on ABHs behalf.
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ABH extending their bid is very bullish. They are continuing to pursue Competition Act approval, which says a lot about their intention to up their bid (they would drop this in a heartbeat if they were not going to re-bid). I'm buying this morning (at a premium). My target is still $1.50. If you look at previous hostiles (RCM and WIN), both bidders announced in 1 or 2 days that they would let their bid expire. ABH continues to be the most logical buyer.
The Street is finally getting bullish. I see one broker speculating potential for $1.80 ABH bid.
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.
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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.
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That's funny, was it a Freudian slip?
"But evil is in the details."
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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.
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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"
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was wondering how many shares this board owns:
I have around 70k under control now. Sold some to redeploy capital to other ideas when the offer came out.
Around 68k.
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Tyska:
I presume that from your enquiries to FBK, feedback was along lines of "we're working hard on it" and "if we do anything, you'll hear about it via press release to all"? However frustrating, this is all they can really say anyway (so can't tell so far whether anything will materialize).
You must be psychic ;). They also said I may address questions to Phoenix Advisory Partners, their Information agent.
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Alertmeipp:
As fyi, I received calls from agencies representing both sides of the deal ... one from FBK two weeks ago, one from ABH last thursday evening.
Save for news articles in local paper, scuttlebutt out of FBK has been eerily quiet. The clock ticks ...
Funny, I've contacted Fbk twice, about their seeming lack of any action. Yet have never been contacted about my shares.
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Sorry SD, but I don't see anything illegal done by Fairfax. There has been no insider trading since no share have been traded yet and this is not the first time that a large shareholder tries to block management from doing something they don't like. Fairfax also knew that all this information would show up in the background information of management's circular. It was certainly reviewed by their lawyers and they are no begineers with such process.
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.
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Nice to see the masters at work? I cannot believe anyone on this board still has respect for these guys. This deal shows that they are anything but Fair and Friendly. More like predatory and hostile. They are robbing FBK minority shareholders - stealing from the poor and giving to the rich. Not to mention I believe that they are acting on material non-public information that none of us possess (see my previous post addressing the private meeting that he had with Garneau where he flipped and hit a bid 45% below his previous rejection 5 months earlier).
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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.
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They probably just want out. Its a drop in the bucket.
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.
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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.
I understand there frustration (similar to Tea Party) but taking $ from those who have will not solve the issues everyone is frustrated about. Using anti-trust measures I think is the best solution. Breaking up to big to fail institutions so they are not to big to fail is a great start. If you look at the solutions the US has used in the past the most effective in my mind has been to enforce competition rules in markets and let the markets do the rest. Once the gov't gets involved in market beyond enforcing rules is where the corruption begins.
A negative I saw in some of the interviews was when asked if he would take a $7/hour job, the protester said no it is not enough. If the movement wants traction beyond the preofessional protester crowd, they are going to have to have more realistic demands. Just my 2c.
Packer
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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. "
Dan
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Just thinking that cancer along with heart disease is a fairly recent problem, yet the homesteaders diet was neither paleo or low carb. Lots of dairy was used, the cow trailing behind the covered wagon wasn't along as a pet. Lots of egg and poultry and lots of bread. Beef or pork was a special event item mostly as you needed a large group to consume. Most of the herder tribes in Africa and Asia have diets high in milk, usually raw or cultured as they have no refrigeration.
Looking at the typical ingredient list on a package with all the preservatives and additives, I could probably swallow that probability ahead of something that has been around for centuries.
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.
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The part that is driving my thinking here, the big wakeup call, is the CANCER they are attributing to diets high in animal protein. Specifically, the experiments around the casein protein in milk -- when fed to rats in amounts typical to our American diets, it gave them cancer. Then they went back to their research done in the 1970s in China -- people who were exposed to the least animal protein had the least amount of cancer.
Just thinking that cancer along with heart disease is a fairly recent problem, yet the homesteaders diet was neither paleo or low carb. Lots of dairy was used, the cow trailing behind the covered wagon wasn't along as a pet. Lots of egg and poultry and lots of bread. Beef or pork was a special event item mostly as you needed a large group to consume. Most of the herder tribes in Africa and Asia have diets high in milk, usually raw or cultured as they have no refrigeration.
Looking at the typical ingredient list on a package with all the preservatives and additives, I could probably swallow that probability ahead of something that has been around for centuries.
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I saw this tonight on Netflix. Very good by the way. Never mentions sugar, but I won't look at animal products the same way again. Makes me think about cutting way back on the animal products.
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Forks-Over-Knives/70185045
Curiously, it makes a claim that drinking milk actually increases the rates of osteoporosis. The claim is that the rich protein content in milk contributes to a condition in your body called acidosis -- and your body buffers the condition by releasing calcium from your bones to buffer it.
Really? They showed a chart of the countries that drank the most milk -- these were the countries that also had the highest rates of osteoporosis.
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.
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Looks like the top executives will be eating well for the next few years.
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. ;)
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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.
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At least if nothing else a 3 cent rise was welcome on a day the TSX was down 268 points.
Sadly the only thing I own that went up today. FFh sure took a drop for a bit there also.
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"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
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... and all of this assumes no asset sales, overly conservative pulp revenues (volume+price), & no benefit for the 3.5M of interest expense they've just eliminated with the Deb retirement.
Patience.
SD
The CDN dollar sliding back won't hurt them either.
Fairfax's action on Fibrek - is it fair to the minor shareholders?
in General Discussion
Posted
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.