SLAM strategy has been SimpleFrom the get go. You use your 10% plus stake to deflect any shareholder complaints. YOu get a bunch of "YES" people to be on your BOD who own no shares and collect the BOD fees and question nothing about your "Value Creation" strategy, if you can call it that, and you collect the $15M a year plus or minus for all these years in management fees to SLAM for your time and trouble.
So, their 10% stake acts as a kind of protection from any shareholder rights activist. The Welch Bros. control SLAM and have 2 BOD seats on Slate. To their detriment, they have earned or inherited a shareholder base which is almost ENTIRELY going to vote against them IF it comes to a vote. We all know this. THere is very little institutional ownertship of the common. They all moved on to greener and better pastures.
Institutions will however buy the convert. The coupon is pretty good, and the strike is pretty good and should or will be In the Money if Slate is liquidated or sold............which is the best case scenario for shearholders.
The thing about SLATE to me is, that if you read their annual reports over the years they talk about buying undervalued properties, that are in A or B cities and A or B properties, that are underleased, with vacancies, or need leashold improvments, and they claim they fix them up and lease them up, and then sell them. Then RINSE and REPEAT.. BUY, if you look closely at the actual lease results, vacancies, and lease improvements, this has not happened at all over a period of years, if you go building by building.
IN fact, they buildings they just sold in Toronto that are in the same office park, one of the buildings has quite a large vacany rate. Ditto for a lot of what they own. Started out sub-par when Slate got them, and pretty much stayed that way.
So the RINSE and REPEAT is really just to generate fees on sales, financing, etc. etc. I don't see much valued added to this strategy except to the Welch Bros,