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BCE Buyout: Meet the New Boss Same as the Old Boss

July 1, 2007 at 06:31 | Print This Post Print This Post

From the CBC: “For consumers, the privatization of BCE likely won’t have much impact because the company will still be run by the same management team led by Sabia.” An intriguing “strategy” - spend billions of dollars on an asset, and give it to the one group of people on the planet who’ve definitively proved their inability to manage it. Update: From the National Post: “Between Mr. Sabia’s 134,124 shares and other compensation awards, he should be able to cash out more than $30-million under the deal announced Saturday.”


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2 Responses to “BCE Buyout: Meet the New Boss Same as the Old Boss”


  1. garhane
    July 3rd, 2007 at 13:02

    It has been quite frantic watching all the news about the prospect of Telus absorbing BCE. As first it sounded like a small snake trying to swallow a very big one and perhaps splitting itself in the effort as some zoo pictures have shown. I worried about it because of the way Telus has responded to debt problems in the past by squeezing the customers and diving into severe reductions of service. I also worried that the company has previously denied service, probably illegally, to those who criticize it, as was seen when it simply cut off this virtual public service to its employees organized in a trade union. And the company was led by an individual who seemed to me the very opposite to the Telco leaders of the past who have at least talked big in terms of public service, and actually did quite a bit. I heard the present guy eats children.

    Anyhow, what a relief it was to hear a pension plan had bought BCE. A pension plan? The worker’s funds are used directly and by their consent to buy a big piece of the “commanding heights”. I know that for quite a while now, the majority of capital investment in Canada has been sourced in “institutional” funds, like pension plans, but this is startling news. It is astonishing to think that angry old German with boils on his bum will turn out to be right about the last days of capital, as he has been about so much. Of course, you could also say this proves out Al Capp.

    And, by the way, is it possible that someone whose name sort of sounds like Tinwhistle has laid a very, very big egg? Pity.