Both the Globe and Mail and the CBC have the happy story this morning about Conrad Black getting a pardon from Donald Trump. What particularly caught my eye was the roll-call of character witnesses who interceded on Mr. Blacks's behalf: Henry Kissinger, Rush Limbaugh, William F. Buckley, and...
Elton John!?
Huh? Which of those is not like the other ones? Do you suppose it was Elton John's word that tipped the balance? Or was the pardon granted in spite of Elton John?
Aside from having been Palm Beach neighbours, Connie and Donnie have something else in common; they were both born to great wealth and worked assiduously to squander it. Conrad seems to have been more successful in that endeavour than has Donald, but continues to live the high life thanks mainly to the largesse of the few friends who stuck by him when the going got tough.
Conrad was somewhat ahead of his time in terms of his business career. He was a pioneer in the looting of employee pension plans back in the 1980s, a practice that has since become commonplace. That episode may have earned him the opprobrium of the general public, but didn't derail his long-term campaign for a seat in the UK's House of Lords, where he remains Baron Black of Crossharbour.
Baron Black redeemed himself somewhat, at least in my eye, with how he handled his US prison term. If you look at the articles he wrote from prison, there's not a lot of woe-is-me griping. Instead, we see an actual mensch developing a surprising (for a pension fiddler) empathy for his fellow inmates.
Maybe that's what caught Elton John's eye too.
Showing posts with label Dominion Stores pension surplus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dominion Stores pension surplus. Show all posts
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Monday, January 28, 2013
Conrad Black rises from pit of shame
Yup!
He's back...
Conrad the Librarian is gonna have a weekly show on Moses "I used to be famous" Znaimer's pseudo-network.
Conrad is recently out of the slammer down there in the US of A, which was the indirect result of fobbing off his sinking publishing ship on those hapless Asper folks in Winnipeg.
And you gotta love Conrad...
Conrad is generally full of shit but he succeeds in intimidating his would-be adversaries out of calling him on it because of his herculean vocabulary and assertive I've done time and you haven't manner.
And also because he triggers more than a bit of liticaphobia.
Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls.
But seriously, I want to be on his show. I have a few questions about what he was thinking when he tried to screw those supermarket cashiers out of their pensions.
He's back...
Conrad the Librarian is gonna have a weekly show on Moses "I used to be famous" Znaimer's pseudo-network.
Conrad is recently out of the slammer down there in the US of A, which was the indirect result of fobbing off his sinking publishing ship on those hapless Asper folks in Winnipeg.
And you gotta love Conrad...
Conrad is generally full of shit but he succeeds in intimidating his would-be adversaries out of calling him on it because of his herculean vocabulary and assertive I've done time and you haven't manner.
And also because he triggers more than a bit of liticaphobia.
Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls.
But seriously, I want to be on his show. I have a few questions about what he was thinking when he tried to screw those supermarket cashiers out of their pensions.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Legends of commerce: Conrad Black
Conrad Black was born choking on a silver spoon, and most of the fortune he was born with has been squandered in various vanity projects designed to build the Conrad Black brand. Mr. Black went back to jail yesterday to serve out the last 13 months of a sentence for stealing from his own company.
Not sure how that works. Sounds like getting charged for stealing your own car. Regardless, sketchy as that may seem, the crime he should have been sent to prison for happened over 25 years ago and wasn't even considered a crime at the time.
In 1984 Mr. Black helped himself to a $56 million "surplus" in the pension plan of the Dominion Store workers. He was the business visionary who realized that if the workers' pension fund had grown beyond the workers' original expectations, that the natural heir to the unexpected bonanza should be the company owner, and not the thousands of retired workers. After all, 56 million spread among thousands of retirees over many years wouldn't amount to much more than a couple hundred per month per retiree. And what's a retired grocery store clerk gonna do with a couple extra hundred a month? Piss it away on bingo and drink, no doubt.
No, Mr. Black had a grander vision for the money. While 56 million divied up amongst a bunch of retired clerks and meat-cutters didn't amount to much, when it was all pooled together into one lump sum for one great man, well, that was a different story, and Conrad Black was nothing if not a Great Man.
Not content with being born rich, Black sought to remake himself as a giant in the world of ideas, in the world of power politics. That required a bigger stage than provincial Canada. Canada was strictly small-pond stuff. Black made it his religious duty to suck up to power. He bought influential newspapers in England and Israel and America and took an active role in making sure that the editorial slant in his papers fawned over the most reactionary actors on the political scene.
The union representing those Dominion workers had other ideas. They spent years hounding the Great Man through the court system. Eventually the Ontario Supreme Court ruled that workers' pension plans belong to workers! Imagine such a thing!
Meanwhile, Black larded the board of directors of his media empire with names like Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, and Richard Perle. He established his scholarly bona fides by writing serious biographies of Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. He gave up his Canadian citizenship to become a member of Britain's House of Lords. He was finally Lord Black. He had arrived!
Alas, just as he was arriving some of the junior shareholders in his media empire were wondering where all the money was going. They hired Richard Breeden, former director of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to investigate. He concluded that Lord Black and a few cronies had looted over $400 million from the company. Why bother with pension plans when you can use an entire media empire as your personal piggy-bank!
That was the beginning of the end for Lord Black's empire. He spent $40 million of somebody's money defending himself, and ended up in jail anyway. And this is where I start to feel a little fondness for the old swindler. Out on parole recently while further appeals were being heard, he gave some remarkable interviews. Among the insights he gleaned in prison; " ...they (fellow-inmates) were on balance more interesting than the membership of most of the prominent clubs I am a member of in London and New York and Toronto."
Conrad, somewhere in all that pompous flim-flammery beats the heart of a mensch. I know most of your high-society friends don't take your calls anymore, but when you get out of the big house you'll always be welcome here at Falling Downs.
We'll cook up some steaks, down a few pints, and talk about what you'd do differently if you could do it all over again.
See ya soon!
Not sure how that works. Sounds like getting charged for stealing your own car. Regardless, sketchy as that may seem, the crime he should have been sent to prison for happened over 25 years ago and wasn't even considered a crime at the time.
In 1984 Mr. Black helped himself to a $56 million "surplus" in the pension plan of the Dominion Store workers. He was the business visionary who realized that if the workers' pension fund had grown beyond the workers' original expectations, that the natural heir to the unexpected bonanza should be the company owner, and not the thousands of retired workers. After all, 56 million spread among thousands of retirees over many years wouldn't amount to much more than a couple hundred per month per retiree. And what's a retired grocery store clerk gonna do with a couple extra hundred a month? Piss it away on bingo and drink, no doubt.
No, Mr. Black had a grander vision for the money. While 56 million divied up amongst a bunch of retired clerks and meat-cutters didn't amount to much, when it was all pooled together into one lump sum for one great man, well, that was a different story, and Conrad Black was nothing if not a Great Man.
Not content with being born rich, Black sought to remake himself as a giant in the world of ideas, in the world of power politics. That required a bigger stage than provincial Canada. Canada was strictly small-pond stuff. Black made it his religious duty to suck up to power. He bought influential newspapers in England and Israel and America and took an active role in making sure that the editorial slant in his papers fawned over the most reactionary actors on the political scene.
The union representing those Dominion workers had other ideas. They spent years hounding the Great Man through the court system. Eventually the Ontario Supreme Court ruled that workers' pension plans belong to workers! Imagine such a thing!
Meanwhile, Black larded the board of directors of his media empire with names like Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, and Richard Perle. He established his scholarly bona fides by writing serious biographies of Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. He gave up his Canadian citizenship to become a member of Britain's House of Lords. He was finally Lord Black. He had arrived!
Alas, just as he was arriving some of the junior shareholders in his media empire were wondering where all the money was going. They hired Richard Breeden, former director of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to investigate. He concluded that Lord Black and a few cronies had looted over $400 million from the company. Why bother with pension plans when you can use an entire media empire as your personal piggy-bank!
That was the beginning of the end for Lord Black's empire. He spent $40 million of somebody's money defending himself, and ended up in jail anyway. And this is where I start to feel a little fondness for the old swindler. Out on parole recently while further appeals were being heard, he gave some remarkable interviews. Among the insights he gleaned in prison; " ...they (fellow-inmates) were on balance more interesting than the membership of most of the prominent clubs I am a member of in London and New York and Toronto."
Conrad, somewhere in all that pompous flim-flammery beats the heart of a mensch. I know most of your high-society friends don't take your calls anymore, but when you get out of the big house you'll always be welcome here at Falling Downs.
We'll cook up some steaks, down a few pints, and talk about what you'd do differently if you could do it all over again.
See ya soon!
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