Thursday, June 24, 2010

His Blackness Outta Jail?

The full opinion is here:

The court ruled that the “Honest Services” statute under which [Conrad Black] was convicted was interpreted too broadly.

Ah well. Convicting him a 2nd time will be twice as sweet.

9 comments:

Jerome Bastien said...

That is wonderful news. Free Lord Black!!!

He was totally innocent!

Reality Bites said...

The obstruction of justice conviction stands and it accounted for most of his sentence.

Southern Quebec said...

WOW! The National Post has it in 85 point headlines!

Patrick Ross said...

Maybe after Conrad Black is convicted again some more of my conservative colleagues will get the message that he is guilty, and shouldn't be defended or associated with.

(Although I confess to reading his Maurice Duplessis biography.)

Jerome Bastien said...

Conrad Black is only guilty of being unabashedly conservative and of making lots of money. The idea that having a personal non-compete clause in a sale agreement which was reviewed and approved by the board of directors is criminal makes no sense at all.

Patrick Ross said...

Uh... buddy, tell a Hollinger stockholder that Conrad Black is only guilty of being conservative and making lots of money.

That would not be a crime. What Black did was a crime.

Jerome Bastien said...

Patrick Ross: Exactly. The stock did quite well under CB. As soon as the dimwits took over to clean up CB's so called mess, the company took a nose dive.

Jerome Bastien said...

ruralsandi:

what does dominion store have to do with anything?

He's in jail for having allegedly defrauded hollinger shareholders. It's just a pretty clear cut fact that its financially beneficial, as a hollinger shareholder to be "defrauded" by Conrad Black instead of being "rescued" by the twits who replaced him.

sharonapple88 said...

He's in jail for having allegedly defrauded hollinger shareholders. It's just a pretty clear cut fact that its financially beneficial, as a hollinger shareholder to be "defrauded" by Conrad Black instead of being "rescued" by the twits who replaced him.

Share price isn't always indicative of the health of a company. Shares of Enron and Nortel were high right before they crashed.

One thing about the company doing well under Conrad Black. Not really. Hard to argue that with losses stretching back to 2001 (US$335 million in 2001 and US$238 million in 2002).

Most of this appears to be linked to the expansion of Hollinger, the debt it took on and the crash of 2001.

"The operating income of its Chicago-area papers, including the flagship Sun-Times, fell from $36 million to $10 million. The Telegraph and its sister publications saw theirs drop from $89 million to $31 million. The division led by the Jerusalem Post lost $3 million. This abrupt decline in income wrought havoc on Black's attempts to reduce debt. He was able to pay down $1 billion in loans with cash from the CanWest sale. But at the end of the year, Hollinger's debt ratio had climbed from five to more than ten times Ebita. Its share price tumbled from about $16 to $9 in 2001. "