From the category archives:

BCE

When the Pillars of Invincibility Fall | A Short Essay on Success and its Frequent Impostors

December 12, 2008

General Motors and Nortel look at bankruptcy. The BCE deal dies.  The Bernard Madoff fortune-making machine was a fraud.   The demise of once commanding forces takes its toll and causes us to have many questions about the permanency of success and the always-looming specter of disaster. This week revealed  things no mortal was ever supposed [...]

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Judge Strine Agrees About Role of BCE Board

May 3, 2007

Last month we raised concerns that BCE’s management —rather than its board— appeared to be leading the auction process that the company had embarked upon. Some days after our posting, the board issued its first statement about the process and made it clear that it was in charge. We see from yesterday’s Globe and Mail [...]

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BCE Board Suddenly Awakes

April 30, 2007

Last week, we observed that BCE’s board has taken too low a profile in the process to consider going private —so low as to be almost invisible. As we said then: The fact that management appears to be leading the process, and has selected partners it feels comfortable with, is also troubling. … It is [...]

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Is BCE Becoming a Contortionist?

April 26, 2007

Another puzzling sign surfaced at BCE this week, when its board announced that it had established a special committee to handle its friendly going private transaction involving Canada Pension Plan and KKR. Unless BCE has gone into the acrobatics business too, it seems to be making a habit of getting things backwards. First, there was [...]

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No Questions for BCE from Sleeping Regulators

April 19, 2007

The Centre for Corporate & Public Governance was the first to raise concerns regarding BCE’s press statements in connection with its private equity talks. It has since received several dozen emails and calls from individual investors expressing fears that they were provided, at best, an incomplete picture by BCE when it denied on March 29th [...]

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BCE’s Privatization Move Too Coincidental for Comfort

April 17, 2007

What a coincidence. BCE is now engaged in the very talks it previously denied were occurring to take the company private, with a group that includes KKR, the very company rumored before to be involved in the discussions —the discussions BCE said were not taking place. It might be regarded as a statistical amusement to [...]

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