Bay Street follies
About 15 years ago I acquired 100 shares in Southam Inc., owner of a chain of Canadian daily newspapers, but I didn’t realize a soap opera would be an added bonus.
In order to buy the shares I first had to submit proof of Canadian citizenship, because this firm had a bylaw at that time requiring total Canadian ownership.
Since then there has been a constant shifting of company control, first involving the Toronto Star and then the Desmarais brothers of Montreal. Recently, Conrad Black’s Hollinger Corporation bought out the Desmarais shares. Conrad Black is a multi-millionaire Canadian who lists his address as London, England. I wonder how he explained that to the alert company secretary.
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Each change involved a new lineup of company directors, this time people expected to agree to policies promulgated by Conrad Black. However, five of the so-called independent directors from the Desmarais era refused to resign.
A special meeting of shareholders was called July 22 of this year to pass a resolution ousting the recalcitrant five directors and replacing them with persons acceptable to the major shareholder. One of the five, Adam Zimmerman of Toronto, had the nerve to question the independence of Black’s nominees. He also wanted disclosed to the shareholders the problems alleged to have been caused by the departing five, but the new executive declined.
Since Zimmerman has 24,196 Southam common shares and Black has 31,139,743, Black had a slight edge.
I don’t know who’s right or wrong in this but I threw the entire weight of my 100 shares behind Zimmerman.
That should rock Bay Street to its foundation.
