RE:Broken Record....
This "accumulating cash in case of unfavourable arbitration" is starting to sound like a
broken record! This whole arbitration thing has turned into a soap opera!
What is real intresting is that they would spend over 5 Million on stock buy back ,
after cutting the dividend in half so they could save more cash???
biloshi - interesting comment... My take on this is that I don't believe that the Chorus BOD was expecting the big drop in share price when they cut the dividend. In some cases a dividend cut brings more comfort to investors if they believe that the company can make better use of the dividend money internally to grow value for investors than they can by paying it out as a dividend. The reaction of the share price in the case of Chorus Aviation seems to indicate the investors were income investors and reacted fairly quickly to get rid of their holdings when the dividend cut came. With this big drop in share price (I think it was down to $1.87 a one point) it presented Chorus with an irresistible opportunity to try a buy back. At least it looked like it would bring value to the shareholders who were staying in and... it should help a little to improve share price with the same earnings being available fewer owners. Coming back to dividend cut, the downside from the resulting drop in share price made the company much more vulnerable a takeover bid. It seems that no one who was positioned to make such an offer was interested in doing so at the time. Not sure if it would be worthwhile to Air Canada to try to acquire Chorus if the arbitration doesn't go their way. Air Canada's balance sheet looks pretty bad with a net equity position of almost -3.5B as of the end of June 2013. The rising share price for Air Canada seems to indicate that there are good things to come for Air Canada but I'd call it way to early to make that call.
Anyway, all this just one opinion. Others welcome...