REGINA (Staff) – Even if legislation allows Saskatchewan Wheat Pool to sell shares on the stock market, a share offering might never happen, company officials said.
“We would have to withdraw it if the number of sells was considerably bigger than the number of buys” during the in-house trading period, pool president Leroy Larsen said during a break in the committee hearings that are examining the pool’s legislation.
If the legislation is passed, the pool will provide a four-week period for pool members to sell and buy shares from each other.
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Outside investors and employees could also buy shares if there were any for sale but not bought by members during the in-house trading. This trading would involve no new equity for the company, only a redistribution of ownership of existing shares, Larsen said.
Two opponents of the legislation said they think many farmers will sell as soon as they are able.
Can’t afford to keep shares
“I don’t think there’s any justification for people to think that existing farmers like myself are going to keep my shares,” said Stewart Wells, a member of anti-legislation group Co-operating Friends of the Pool. “I can’t afford to keep those class “B” (non-voting) shares in there, so I will be selling them.”
Regina-area pool member Norman Bray said he had heard that farmers “will get rid of their shares as quickly as they can because they want the money or because they no longer have a great deal of faith in the organization.”
And he said “sticking with the old Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, my co-op, and sticking with the new Sask Pool, which betrayed me, is an entirely different thing. I feel like a mushroom, like a dumb little pawn, and I don’t want to feel that way.”
Pool lawyer John Beke said timing of the share offering itself, if everything else goes according to the pool’s plans, will depend on the stock market.
“No matter how valuable the company is, if it were in a bad stock market, if the market was not taking up new issues, it may not be saleable,” he said.
That’s why the legislation promoted by the company allows it to pick the time it goes public, Beke said.
Opponents of the proposal attacked this aspect of the legislation. The CFOP likened the pool’s request for choice in timing of the share offering to bad situations both contemporary and classical.
“Surely no-one wants a situation like (Quebec premier Jacques) Parizeau is promoting in Quebec, where action on the Act would hang like the sword of Damocles over everyone’s head indefinitely,” the group said in its presentation.
