Canada's newspaper of record today bids a fond and fawning farewell to hedgie Bill Ackman, who is walking away from an immiserated Canadian Pacific after stuffing his pockets with 2.6 billion dollars. Here's the intro paragraph to writer Svea Herbst-Bayliss' story;
Activist investor William Ackman left the board of Canadian Pacific on Tuesday, marking the end of a four-year tenure that helped overhaul the ailing railroad company and earn his hedge fund roughly $2.6-billion.
I suppose 2,600 millions is a reasonable sum to pay an "activist investor" for overhauling an "ailing" company that had net income of $650,000,000 the year before Ackman began accumulating shares. After all, the writers and editors of Canada's number one business newspaper seem to think so.
I'm a little perturbed that Ackman's overhaul cost the Canadian economy somewhere north of 5,000 excellent jobs. The think tank here at Falling Downs was always a little iffy about why major Canadian media keep telling us that it's a good thing that American investors would or could be given carte blanche to loot an iconic Canadian company.
But they were, they did, and it's all over but the gloating by our media and the crying among those 5,000+ Canadian families who saw their bread-winners shunted out of well-paying jobs to set the table for Bill Ackman's heroic rescue of Canadian Pacific.
Showing posts with label Ackman takes over CPR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ackman takes over CPR. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Friday, October 3, 2014
Uber-douchebag Hunter "Hitman" Harrison blasts gov't for overreacting post Lac Megantic
You remember Lac Megantic?
That was the sleepy Quebec small-town that was literally blown off the map last year when one of Fast Eddie Burkhardt's single-crew oil trains exploded in the downtown.
Hardly a year has passed, and CP Rail Boss Hunter Harrison is busy whinging about government over-regulation. Harrison just doesn't get why the busy-body government regulators need to fiddle with the free market, and impose draconian communistic rules about everything from speed limits for trains carrying dangerous goods, to mandating that a mile-long train loaded with dangerous goods should have more than a one-man crew!
Well Hunter, let me 'splain it to ya; the reason the government needs to regulate greedy twats like you and your acolyte Burkhardt, is because your logic, your procedures, your unregulated over-weening greed, killed 47 people in Lac Megantic...
...yet nobody is facing murder charges!
The reason Hunter is lobbying for less regulation is obvious. The entire Ackman/Harrison strategy for boosting CP Rail's obscene profits going forward hinges on making trains longer and running them faster with smaller crews!
Fuck safety!
Fuck sleepy small towns everywhere!
Profit uber alles!
That was the sleepy Quebec small-town that was literally blown off the map last year when one of Fast Eddie Burkhardt's single-crew oil trains exploded in the downtown.
Hardly a year has passed, and CP Rail Boss Hunter Harrison is busy whinging about government over-regulation. Harrison just doesn't get why the busy-body government regulators need to fiddle with the free market, and impose draconian communistic rules about everything from speed limits for trains carrying dangerous goods, to mandating that a mile-long train loaded with dangerous goods should have more than a one-man crew!
Well Hunter, let me 'splain it to ya; the reason the government needs to regulate greedy twats like you and your acolyte Burkhardt, is because your logic, your procedures, your unregulated over-weening greed, killed 47 people in Lac Megantic...
...yet nobody is facing murder charges!
The reason Hunter is lobbying for less regulation is obvious. The entire Ackman/Harrison strategy for boosting CP Rail's obscene profits going forward hinges on making trains longer and running them faster with smaller crews!
Fuck safety!
Fuck sleepy small towns everywhere!
Profit uber alles!
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
The annual pilgrimage
This is the time of year we like to head north for a few days.
We camp on the north shore of Lake Superior, along the Schrieber - Marathon stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway. We have a campsite where we can see the lake and the CPR line that cuts overhead along the steep Canadian Shield cliffs.
This is an area that always knocks you out with it's natural beauty. The rocks, the trees, that great inland sea. For me it always draws me into history as well.
The history of the CPR for example.
It's everywhere up here. In fact, it's everywhere all over the country.
The Scottish investors who were behind the CPR got $25 million cash and a land grant of 25 million acres for building the railway.
The history of the CPR is in flux again. Some New York hedge fund manager figures he can milk a few billion out of the old cow. He's just parachuted an American CEO in after winning a proxy battle to get rid of the old management.
Nothing new in that. After the first year of construction of the CPR, the owners turfed out their senior management and brought in an American. He made himself rich building that railway.
That railway and the subsidiaries that have been spun off from it have made many people rich over the past 130 years, so maybe there's enough juice left for this latest crew of paper-shufflers.
None of which takes away from the achievement of those laborers and blacksmiths and miners and carpenters and engineers and surveyors who actually made that rock cut we're looking at, and put the tracks up there.
But don't get me started... I come here to get away from thinking.
We camp on the north shore of Lake Superior, along the Schrieber - Marathon stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway. We have a campsite where we can see the lake and the CPR line that cuts overhead along the steep Canadian Shield cliffs.
This is an area that always knocks you out with it's natural beauty. The rocks, the trees, that great inland sea. For me it always draws me into history as well.
The history of the CPR for example.
It's everywhere up here. In fact, it's everywhere all over the country.
The Scottish investors who were behind the CPR got $25 million cash and a land grant of 25 million acres for building the railway.
The history of the CPR is in flux again. Some New York hedge fund manager figures he can milk a few billion out of the old cow. He's just parachuted an American CEO in after winning a proxy battle to get rid of the old management.
Nothing new in that. After the first year of construction of the CPR, the owners turfed out their senior management and brought in an American. He made himself rich building that railway.
That railway and the subsidiaries that have been spun off from it have made many people rich over the past 130 years, so maybe there's enough juice left for this latest crew of paper-shufflers.
None of which takes away from the achievement of those laborers and blacksmiths and miners and carpenters and engineers and surveyors who actually made that rock cut we're looking at, and put the tracks up there.
But don't get me started... I come here to get away from thinking.
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