Dark side, bright side...Gang, you will have to prepare yourselves. I am going to say a lot of negative stuff. So unlike me I know...!
It must be said that my outlook regarding Torstar has generally been on sunny side.
Before getting back to that optimistic default postion, it might be therapeutic to consider the negative side.
MW has thoroughly listed the many unprofitable actions taken by Torstar. Does that corporate writhing show how very tough the business situation is? Does it show that the decison-makers
have difficulty making good decisons.
I cannot shake the feeling that dishonesty is lurking in the Torstar boardroom. Perhaps I should try to sound a bit more worldly-wise, and ask myself...is it reasonable to go looking for honesty in Boardroom in the first place. My pet question: why was Harlequin sold? I have a notion that it was sold on paper, but that the Controlling shareholders wanted the Harlequin cash machine all to themselves. It cannot be that hard to make it appear that Rupert Murdoch owns Harlequin, while in fact he is just holding it for the Controlling group and ensuring that the Group gets the Harlequin revenue for themselves.
The fact of the matter is that if the supposed $400 million for Harlequin was to be best spent, then it was obvious that it should have bought shares in Google. Google took the ad dollars, so invest in Google to get the ad dollars back. Easy. The problem, if I may pursue this line of thinking, is that to buy Google shares would have required real money, real transactions, and the investment would have to be shared with the A and B holders. It is possible that the V-scope "deal" was merely to give the appearance of the supposed Harlequin money being supposedly spent.
Quite a few years back, when Income Trusts waked the earth, I bought shares in a company called Newport Partners. The shares ultimately tanked. My sense of what happened is that Newport got a lot of money selling shares in itself (let's say 100 million). The company was made up of partnerships with a bunch of smaller companies. The 100 million was then paid out to the owners of these smaller companies so that Newport could "buy" a partnership amount of said smaller companies. Well, what do you know...the smaller companies end up being not so hot, but their owners still get a stack of cash, and Wally the investor has a pile of worthless shares. Similarly, perhaps, V-scope, conveniently private, gets a pile of cash (perhaps returned to the Controllers), while the shareholders have a worthless position in v-scope; v-scope, which like those smaller Newport "partner" companies turned out to be less than stellar.
What about that wonderful writer at The Star who killed herself because of an "office romance" gone wrong. Clearly, that was a sign of an organization with a questionable corporate culture...and should have been sign to sell. The sale of Harlequin was also a time to sell ones shares.
The Globe and Mail reported that Wasta was looking at Torstar, but then nothing happened. Another time to sell.
Next, Watsa himself was involved in a courtcase...involving...let's call it questionable business ethics.
The paper itself is far from compelling in terms of content. I actually favour The Globe and Mail. The writer
I myself did in fact contact their advertising department asking about the cost of an ad in their print copy soliciting The Star subscribers themselves to pariticipate in a buy out of all Torstar shares. I never heard back from the ad department.
I make a promise right here, right now, that I will create a news-type website that will have compelling and varied content. Not only will I recoup my seemingly certain Torstar losses, the site itself will compete with Torstar, and give readers something better. And the sports section will be called Sports for Forklift Guy
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On the bright side, Torstar tends to come out of recessions quite strongly. The many cost-cutting measures will take hold. They got out of that pension stuff in the nick of time. Low rates are bad news for pension obligations as I recall.